Police in the small town of Windsor, Virginia, found themselves in the national spotlight after being hit by a lawsuit from an army officer, who is black and Latin, after a traffic stop on last December.
In the video of the body camera and mobile phone, you can see the second lieutenant of the army Caron Nazario, still in uniform, with his hands visible through the window of his new car.
“I didn’t commit any crime,” Nazario said.
When two Windsor police officers, with guns thrown, ordered him to leave, he said, “I’m sincerely afraid to leave.”
“Yes, friend, you should be,” an officer replies.
In the video, Nazario repeatedly asks why he was arrested and one of the two officers makes peppers and kicks him. He is then handcuffed while police searched his car.
Nazario asks, “Why do they treat me like that? Why?”
“Because you’re not cooperating,” one officer replies.
Prosecutor Jonathan Arthur, who represents Nazario in a lawsuit filed earlier this month against the two agents, said he feared that if he took his hands out of sight, something bad would happen.
“To undo his seat belt, do anything, any wrong step, he was afraid they would kill him,” Arthur said.
The incident report said Nazario was initially removed for not having tags on his SUV, but the dealer’s time plate is visible in the camera video of the agent’s body.
Nazario was released without being charged.
“What prompted him to file is the need to stop this behavior,” Arthur said. “The need to hold these two officers accountable and make sure they can’t do it again.”
The Windsor Police Department did not respond to a request for comment from CBS News.