Police chief refuses to apologize in pepper-spray incident
PETERSBURG, Va. – While he said he felt bad for how the events of a traffic stop late last year unfolded, the police chief of the town where a Black and Latino military officer from Petersburg was accosted by two of his officers said Wednesday that he does not think the soldier is in need of an official apology.
In response, Army Lt. Caron Nazario’s legal team said Windsor Police Department Chief Rodney D. Riddle “continues a false narrative” and blaming their client for initiating it. They said the video “shows otherwise” that their client was nothing but compliant.
“I’m gonna own what we did,” Riddle said Wednesday. “My guys missed opportunities to verbally deescalate that thing and change that outcome.”
When asked by a reporter if Nazario was owed an apology for that, Riddle replied: “I don’t believe that,” adding he wished the driver “would have complied a whole lot earlier.”
Earlier this month, Nazario’s attorney filed a $1 million lawsuit against the officers in Norfolk federal court.
Video of the Dec. 5 traffic stop at a BP gas station in Windsor – about 50 miles southeast of Petersburg – shows officers Joe Gutierrez and Daniel Crocker, with guns drawn, ordering Nazario out of his vehicle after he was stopped for allegedly not having a rear license tag. Nazario was returning to Petersburg following an assignment.
Gutierrez, the closest to Nazario in the video, repeatedly tells Nazario to get out while Nazario repeatedly asks why he was stopped. At one point, Gutierrez reaches for his stun gun and warns Nazario he is about to “ride the lightning,” an idiom for tasering, or for execution by electric chair. He later sprays Nazario in the face with pepper spray.
Nazario eventually was pulled out of the car and placed in handcuffs on the ground. Eventually, the officers admit they could see the rear tag taped to the inside of the rear windshield, and they let him go. According to the video, they told Nazario to keep quiet about the stop under the threat of facing more charges.
Gutierrez, a field training officer for the seven-person Windsor police department, was fired following an internal investigation by the department. Crocker, a Windsor native and rookie on the force, was disciplined; Riddle said he is seen in the video attempting to defuse the tension.