Racially motivated assault charges filed against former New Hampshire police officer

CONCORD, NH – A white former New Hampshire police officer has been charged with racially abusing a Black bank executive outside a restaurant on Thanksgiving Eve 2023, according to a civil rights complaint filed by the attorney general’s office.

Similar complaints were also filed against Aaron Goodwin’s brother and sister-in-law. The Goodwin family’s conduct “was motivated by race and/or national origin,” the attorney general’s office said in its filing Tuesday.

To establish a violation of the New Hampshire Civil Rights Act, the agency says it must show that a person has violated the victim’s rights to engage in lawful activities by threatening to use or actually use of physical force or violence against him or her, motivated ‘by race’. , color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity, or disability,” according to state law.

Goodwin pleaded guilty last month to a charge of simple assault after the encounter with the man, identified by the attorney general’s office as “MD,” and received a suspended sentence. The man came forward last November and identified himself as Mamadou Dembele.

“We are quite surprised to see this complaint from the Attorney General’s office as there are no comments attributable to Aaron Goodwin that are in any way racist,” his attorney John Durkin said in a statement Wednesday. telephone interview.

He said Goodwin reacted as he did because he felt his safety and that of his family members were threatened. “It had nothing to do with race,” he said.

Goodwin, from Eliot, Maine, and his relatives from Maryland first encountered Dembele at the restaurant, where they were all waiting to pick up food.

The sister-in-law asked where he was from, and he answered Africa. The brother then called him an “idiot” and said Africa was a continent and not a country, the complaint said.

Goodwin then told Dembele, who had been at a cigar bar, that he smelled, the complaint alleges. Dembele responded by offering him a cigar. Goodwin’s brother asked Goodwin why he was talking to “this idiot” and said the man was too poor to afford a good cigar, the complaint said. The brother then made a drug-related comment about the cigar and black people, the complaint said.

Goodwin and his relatives eventually left. As Dembele left, he encountered the three in the parking lot and the brother, Kevin Goodwin, told him to leave. Dembele asked Kevin Goodwin what his problem was, which led to a confrontation. At one point, Aaron Goodwin pulled Dembele to the ground, the complaint said.

The attorney general’s office has filed a separate civil rights complaint against Kevin Goodwin, accusing him of calling Dembélé racist comments and pushing another unknown black man who was near the restaurant and tried to intervene. The sister-in-law, Shannon Goodwin, is accused in a separate complaint of calling the man racial slurs and punching him in the chest and face.

The attorney general’s office is asking a judge for a temporary restraining order “to protect the victims and the public from the Goodwins.” It also asks for a fine of $5,000 each against Aaron and Kevin Goodwin, and $10,000 against Shannon Goodwin.

Kevin Goodwin pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in August and paid a fine of more than $600; Prosecutors dropped a simple assault charge against him. Shannon Goodwin’s case remains open. State police issued a warrant for her arrest earlier this year on three felonies, including simple assault and disorderly conduct.

The Associated Press left messages seeking comment with Kevin Goodwin and his attorney, and at a number listed for Shannon Goodwin.

Dembele filed a separate lawsuit against Aaron Goodwin in federal court last week, accusing him of negligence, battery and assault. According to the lawsuit, Dembele suffered a concussion, a tear in his left Achilles tendon that required surgery, and “other physical and psychological injuries.”

Durkin said Aaron Goodwin has not yet been served with the lawsuit or the attorney general’s complaint.

Aaron Goodwin was fired from the Portsmouth Police Department in 2015 after a judge-led panel investigating a $2.7 million inheritance dispute found he had violated the police department’s code of ethics and duty manual.

The panel concluded that Goodwin should have refused an elderly woman’s offer to leave him her estate and informed regulators of the offer. A judge stripped Goodwin of the inheritance, saying the officer was “self-interested” in befriending the woman, who was in her 90s and had dementia.