CONCORD, NH (AP) — A white former New Hampshire police officer was charged with racially motivated assault against a Black bank executive outside a restaurant on Thanksgiving Eve 2023, according to a civil rights complaint filed by the state attorney general’s office.

Similar allegations were also made 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 Law, the office says it must show that a person interfered with the victim’s rights to engage in lawful activities by threatening to use or using physical force or violence against her motivated “by racial reasons.” , color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity or disability,” according to state law.

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

“We are quite surprised to see this complaint from the attorney general’s office because there are no comments that can be attributed to Aaron Goodwin that are racist in any way,” his attorney, John Durkin, said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

He said Goodwin responded the way 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 her family members, from Maryland, first encountered Dembélé inside the restaurant, where everyone was waiting to pick up food.

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

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

Goodwin and his relatives eventually left. When Dembélé left, he met the three in the parking lot, at which point his brother Kevin Goodwin told him to leave. Dembélé asked Kevin Goodwin what his problem was and that led to a confrontation. At some point, Aaron Goodwin knocked Dembélé to the ground, according to the complaint.

The attorney general’s office filed a separate civil rights complaint against Kevin Goodwin, accusing him of racially insulting Dembélé and shoving another unidentified black man who was near the restaurant and tried to intervene. The sister-in-law, Shannon Goodwin, is accused in a separate complaint of racially insulting the man and hitting him in the chest and face.

The attorney general’s office is asking a judge for a preliminary restraining order “to protect the Goodwins’ victims and the public.” He also seeks 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 against him earlier this year for three misdemeanor counts of simple assault and disorderly conduct.

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

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

Durkin said Aaron Goodwin has not yet received the lawsuit or the complaint from the attorney general’s office.

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

The panel concluded that Goodwin should have rejected an elderly woman’s offer to leave her estate to him and should have notified supervisors of the offer. A judge stripped Goodwin of the inheritance, saying the officer was “selfish” when he befriended the woman, who was in her 90s and suffered from dementia.

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