The Town of Windsor on Friday reposted a police body cam video showing a prior traffic stop involving an Army lieutenant who is suing two of its police officers for a stop that happened a month later.
The move comes one day after town officials briefly posted the video on its website, then quickly took it down once they realized some identifying information about the motorist, Lt. Caron Nazario, needed to be redacted from it.
The 16-minute redacted video shows Nazario being stopped for speeding on Nov. 7. It’s much tamer than the recording of the Dec. 5 incident that led to one Windsor officer being fired and calls for the police chief to resign. There were no threats, no guns drawn and no pepper spray.
It did, however, bear some similarities to the one that followed.
In the first stop, Nazario also didn’t pull over immediately and had a temporary tag on his vehicle. His attorney said Nazario didn’t pull over right away because he was waiting to get to a safe spot. The video shows him stopped at a Food Lion parking lot.
The recording begins with an officer radioing that he is about to conduct a traffic stop of a dark-colored SUV that has no rear license plate displayed. He later says that the vehicle is traveling at 54 mph in a 35-mph zone.
“Still trying to get the vehicle to stop,” the officer can be heard saying. After he approaches the vehicle, Nazario tells him he has a temporary plate on the rear window. He also says he hadn’t gotten a permanent plate yet because “the DMV is backed up.”
Nazario asks the officer if he can be let off with a warning, and said it was an “honest mistake.” The officer says no, however, and that 19 mph over the speed limit is too much to give a warning. He also notes that it’s foggy outside, making it particularly dangerous to be speeding.
Online court records show the speeding case is still pending. The records also indicate Nazario has an attorney representing him, and there is a court date scheduled for May.
Windsor officials said earlier this week they planned to post all body cam videos involving Nazario on the town’s website, including the one from November. They said they were doing so in an effort to be transparent after video of the December traffic stop made national news.
In that incident, police body cam video shows the two officers — Joe Gutierrez and Daniel Crocker — drawing their guns immediately after Nazario drove for nearly a mile in the darkness before pulling over at a well-lit BP gas station. Gutierrez then pepper sprays Nazario after he says he’s afraid to get out and refuses to open the door.
Nazario’s attorney, Jonathan Arthur, believes the town posted the video to retaliate against the Army officer and traumatize him again.
Arthur also believes the brief posting of the unredacted video, with what the town believed to be Nazario’s home address, when they knew he feared retaliation, was illegal and that he had notified “the appropriate authorities.”
Jane Harper, 757-222-5097, jane.harper@pilotonline.com
