Imagine answering the door to a police officer telling you he’s investigating ‘suspicious activity’ and asks you for your ID. You show it to him, but don’t hand it to him, so he promptly throws you on the ground and handcuffs you.
Later, even though you did nothing wrong in the first place, you are charged with resisting arrest and obstructing a peace officer, putting your career is in jeopardy.
This is exactly what happened to US Air Force Capt. Nicolas Aquino one Saturday afternoon last December.
The Monterey County District Attorney is pressing charges against this man with two misdemeanors.
If you would like to call the Monterey County DA and register your grievance at this atrocity you can do so with the contact information below:
Monterey Office
1200 Aguajito Road, Room 301
Monterey, CA 93940
Phone: 831-647-7770
Fax: 831-647-7762
An Air Force captain was mistaken for a burglar, tackled and handcuffed in his own California home in December. Now he’s in court for resisting arrest and obstructing a peace officer, and his career is in jeopardy.
US Air Force Capt. Nicolas Aquino, a student at the Naval Postgraduate School at the time, was at home on a Saturday afternoon in mid-December when his dogs began barking, the Monterey County Weekly reports. Aquino opened the door to a police officer, stepped outside and closed the door behind him.
That police officer was Monterey Sheriff’s Deputy Ivan Rodriguez. He told Aquino he was investigating a report of suspicious activity in the area. According to his written report, he was looking for “an adult Hispanic male wearing a hoodie” walking around and into a Carmel Woods’ home. Aquino was wearing a hoodie, and had previously been walking outside his home, looking for a UPS package.
“All he said was, ‘I need to see your ID.’ At that moment I’m like, ‘Excuse me sir, but who are you? And why are you here?” Aquino told KSBW.
“He says it again, I have to produce identification. At that moment I asked him, ‘Am I being detained?’ He said, ‘Yes,’ and so I said, ‘OK, then my name is Nicolas Aquino. I live right here. I’m in the military’,” Aquino said.
Aquino says he then pulled out his wallet to show his military identification, but did not hand the card to Rodriguez.
Rodriguez’s report then says, “The male then pulled his hand away from me, thereby moving the card away from my hand. I decided at that point I would detain him physically and place him into handcuffs.”
Then things got rough, Aquino told KSBW. “That’s when he grabs my wrist, puts me in a front guillotine, slams my head into the ground and spins around and does a rear naked choke, so he puts me in a choke hold,” he said.
Rodriquez was sitting on top of Aquino, with his hands around Aquino’s head. “I yelled at the male to put his hands out to his sides. The male never complied. He was beginning to draw them in closer to the center of his body,” Rodriguez wrote in the incident report, according to KSBW. “Afraid that the male was going to reach for a weapon, I contemplated disengaging from him, drawing my own firearm and taking aim.”
A second deputy arrived on the scene. Aquino was handcuffed and put in the patrol car, the Monterey County Weekly reports. Aquino told the police that he didn’t consent to a search of his house, according to the local newspaper. “They went to my door and it appears they went into my house.” After 20 minutes, the police officers let Aquino get bills from his home to prove he lived there.
Aquino claims the deputy blamed him for the situation, telling him that he should have known his neighbors better. Then, Aquino says, Rodriguez told him, “You started this by not giving me your ID.”
Aquino was not charged with any crime at the scene. He and his wife moved from the home with two months left on their lease, too upset to stay after the incident. Nearly seven weeks later, at the end of January, an officer at the NPS called Aquino and told him, “Don’t come to NPS or any other base, there’s a warrant out for your arrest,” the Monterey County Weekly reports.
The Monterey County District Attorney was pressing charges in the incident. Aquino was charged with two misdemeanors: resisting arrest and obstructing a peace officer. Aquino asked the DA to drop the charges, “but was told it wasn’t going to happen,” KSBW reports.
Aquino had his first pre-trial hearing last Wednesday, the Monterey Herald reports. His lawyer, Steve Liner, is seeking a court order to open Rodriguez’s personnel file. The DA’s office is looking at the case for the potential for a plea agreement, and District Attorney Dean Flippo asked prosecutors “hold off on doing anything,” Chief Assistant District Attorney Terry Spitz told the Herald.
Liner told the Herald that Aquino has since finished his studies at NPS and was recently scheduled to be deployed, but has remained in the California county until the case is resolved. Aquino told KSBW that the entire ordeal has put his military career in jeopardy.
Aquino is a first-generation American whose parents fled Paraguay as refugees. The Air Force has used Aquino in a promotional video based on his life.
I hope the Air Force is standing behind this officer.
Yeah well whats going to happen here is some cops are going to lose their lives you better believe that the people won’t stand for this c**p long watch and see
If you would like to call the Monterey County DA and register your grievance at this atrocity you can do so with the contact information below:
Monterey Office
1200 Aguajito Road, Room 301
Monterey, CA 93940
Phone: 831-647-7770
Fax: 831-647-7762
There is no reason on earth for the officer overreacting to the situation other than he is afraid to do his job correctly. They always have a reason to use excessive force and the state always backs them up. I hope the cop gets fired.
Damn repubs are destroying our country! You want my license, gotta get past my gun!
What the hell are you talking about. What does this have to do with Republicans? There probably aren’t three Republicans in all of Monterey, What a tool bag
he should file a law suit against the officer and another against the city.
Yep, to cover his full loss of benefits if his career is messed up.
A few years ago I stopped for coffee and left to find a parking ticket on my truck for parking within 5 feet of an alley way. It was about 20 feet so I got my camera and took pic.’s then had some people inside the cafe sign off as witnesses. Bottom line I had to appear in court 6 times, each time being offered a better deal if I would just plead guilty. I refused and they finally dropped it and were pissed off at me for it. Luckily I had just lost my job so I could go to court and see it through, but they count on most people just giving up because it costs more than the fine to keep showing up. When I think about how mush court time and man hours were wasted on this it makes me sick, then they scream for more money and more cops. This is what America is coming too and I don’t like it. Now government is giving them armored military vehicles to roam the streets while dressed for combat carrying machine guns. Then the politicians try to pass illegal laws to dis arm we the people. To think this officers family had to flee their own Country because of a repressive police state, and coming to America the land of the free, and then be treated like this by our own police state makes me ashamed. This c**p has got to stop and I fear it will take much blood shed and a new revolution to get it done…
This is just wrong misuse of police power corruption , bad training, and just evil! What ever happened to officer friendly. shame on this police officer and his cohorts.
ted says:
“This is just wrong misuse of police power corruption , bad training, and just evil! What ever happened to officer friendly. shame on this police officer and his cohorts.”
From: http://www.truthandaction.org/af-capt-charged-with-resisting-arrest-doing-nothing-in-own-home/comment-page-1/#comment-347091
the NWO AND NAFTA that’s whats going on in this country a sad dark day for real americans