Rare News Desk
Monterey, Calif. policemen beat up and handcuffed U.S. Air Force Capt. Nicolas Aquino in his own home last December when they mistook him for a burglar.
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“Now, Aquino is being charged with resisting arrest and obstructing a peace officer,” KSBW reports.
A neighbor called the police on Aquino after they believed they saw a suspicious person walking around his house. When officers arrived at his house, they demanded to see his identification.
“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,'” he said.
As Aquino reached into his pocket to show the officers his his military ID, the officers they would handcuff him him.
“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,” the deputy accounted in the sheriff’s report.
Aquino accounted the story a little differently.
“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,” Aquino said.
The police report continues to starkly differ from Aquino’s account.
“I yelled at the male to put his hands out to his sides,” the deputy recalled. “The male never complied. He was beginning to draw them in closer to the center of his body. Afraid that the male was going to reach for a weapon, I contemplated disengaging from him, drawing my own firearm and taking aim.”
“I physically can’t move, I’m not resisting,” Aquino explained.
KSBW notes that Aquino was eventually released once he was able to prove his identity, but notes “[h]e was never armed with a weapon and was never arrested.”
What’s more, seven weeks after the incident, he was issued an arrest warrant.
“Monterey County District Attorney prosecutors are pressing misdemeanor charges against Aquino for resisting arrest and obstructing a peace officer,” KSBW writes.
The charges have affected Aquino’s military career, who is not only a captain in the Air Force, but also a student at the Naval graduate school in Monterey.
The Air Force captain said he didn’t find out about the arrest warrant until his Naval Post Graduate School supervisor called him and said he was not allowed back on campus until he dealt with the charges pending against him.
Aquino’s lawyer asked the Monterey County District Attorney to drop the charges, but was told it wasn’t going to happen.
