VA Democratic Candidates React To Pepper-Spraying In Windsor

VIRGINIA — Democrats running for state office in 2021 are reacting in varying ways to a video showing two police officers in a small town in southeastern Virginia drawing their guns on and pepper-spraying a motorist.

Some candidates are using the incident to highlight their proposed steps for greater police accountability while others are expressing dismay with police conduct in the video but are offering few specific remedies.

U.S. Army Medic Lieutenant Caron Nazario, who was shown on video as he was pulled over and threatened by two police officers in Windsor on Dec. 5, 2020, is suing the police officers.

Video of the incident went widespread on social media over the weekend, leading the Windsor police to fire one of the police officers almost four months after the incident.

The video shows Nazario, who is Black and Latino, telling the officers he was afraid to get out of his car as guns were drawn by police. One of the officers, Joe Gutierrez, responds by saying, "Yeah, you should be." Windsor is a small town in the Hampton Roads area.

On Sunday, Gov. Ralph Northam, who has endorsed former Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) for governor, directed the Virginia State Police to conduct an “independent investigation” following the encounter between the U.S. Army officer and the two Windsor police officers, Gutierrez and Daniel Crocker.

In his response to the incident, McAuliffe said what happened to Nazario was “unacceptable from any officer here in the Commonwealth or in this nation.”

“Our communities deserve better and we cannot stop fighting until we eradicate these reprehensible racist acts once and for all,” McAuliffe said in a tweet.

In response to police misconduct, McAuliffe says on his campaign website that Virginia needs to "rebuild trust between law-enforcement agencies and communities."

Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax (D), who is running for governor, said in a tweet that "there must be change and that change must arrive quickly. I call for a full federal investigation into both of these disturbing incidents, accountability and justice."

Other candidates are calling for stronger action at the legislative level to prevent a repeat of what happened in Windsor.

Del. Lee Carter (D-50th), who is also seeking the Democratic nomination for governor, noted that the incident in Windsor happened only a few months after the General Assembly's special session on police violence in late 2020 gave state police a cash bonus and failed to end qualified immunity, a doctrine that often is used to protect officers from lawsuits.

"It doesn't make sense to have armed police doing traffic enforcement, or welfare checks, or dealing with people in mental health or substance abuse crises," Carter tweeted Monday. "The presence of a man with a gun in ALL of those scenarios makes things worse."

"What happened to Lt. Caron Nazario is unacceptable, and it has to stop," state Sen. Jennifer McClellan (D-9th), who is running for governor, said in a tweet. "We have got to improve police accountability in Virginia because no one should be afraid — or told to be afraid — for their own life at the hands of law enforcement."

Former Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy tweeted that she is running for governor so that Black parents “no longer have to tell our children about the two different systems of justice in Virginia. We need real reform and leaders with the will to act.”

Del. Elizabeth Guzman (D-31st), who is running for lieutenant governor, said the incident is “the very embodiment of police brutality.”

“It is shameful that with a Democratic trifecta, we could not pass a bill to end qualified immunity in Virginia,” said Guzman.

Del. Mark Levine (D-45th), another Democrat running for lieutenant governor, introduced legislation that would have required officer Crocker to have reported the conduct of fellow officer Gutierrez to his superiors.

Levine’s bill did not make it out of Senate committee in 2020.

“Just last year, I introduced a bill to require police to report others’ misconduct. If my bill had been law, we would have known about this four months ago,” Levine said in a video Monday. “It’s not just Republicans blocking these bills, my friends. “It’s some Democrats, too.”

Two other candidates for lieutenant governor, Del. Sam Rasoul (D-11th) and Sean Perryman, former president of the Fairfax County NAACP, also support ending qualified immunity for police officers.

“What happened to Lt. Nazario isn’t just wrong — it was a violent abuse of power,” Perryman said Monday in a statement. “At one point in the body camera footage, Nazario is heard saying ‘I’m honestly afraid to get out of the car,’ to which officer Gutierrez replies ‘Yeah, you should be.’ I can only imagine the fear that this reply sent through Lt. Nazario.”

In his police reform agenda, Perryman is calling for ending qualified immunity for police officers to hold police officers accountable for their misconduct and rejecting calls for more funding for local police departments as a part of police reform efforts.