CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A white former New Hampshire police officer has been accused of race-motivated assault against a Black bank executive outside of a diner on Thanksgiving Eve 2023, according to a civil rights complaint filed by the state attorney general’s office.
Similar complaints also were filed against Aaron Goodwin's brother and sister-in-law. The conduct by the Goodwin family “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 office says it must demonstrate that a person interfered with the rights of the victim to engage in lawful activities by threatening to use or actually use physical force or violence against them motivated “by race, 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 following the encounter with the man, identified as "M.D.'' by the attorney general's office, and received a suspended sentence. The man came forward last November and identified himself as Mamadou Dembele.
“We're quite surprised to see this complaint from the attorney general's office because there’s no comments that can be attributable to Aaron Goodwin that are racist in any way, shape or form,” his lawyer, John Durkin said in a phone interview Wednesday.
He said Goodwin responded the way he did because he felt his safety and his relatives' safety was threatened. “It had nothing to do with race whatsoever,” he said.
Goodwin, of Eliot, Maine, and his relatives, of Maryland, first encountered Dembele inside the diner, where they were all waiting to pick up food.
The sister-in-law asked where he was from, and he replied Africa. The brother then called him a "moron,'' saying that Africa was a continent, not a country, according to the complaint.
Goodwin then told Dembele, who had been in 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 (expletive) moron” 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. When Dembele left, he encountered the three in the parking lot, at which point the brother, Kevin Goodwin, told him to leave. Dembele asked Kevin Goodwin what his problem was, and that led to a confrontation. At some point, Aaron Goodwin pulled Dembele down 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 Dembele racial slurs and shoving another unidentified Black man who was near the diner and tried to intervene. The sister-in-law, Shannon Goodwin, is accused in a separate complaint of calling that man racial slurs 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 victims and the public from the Goodwins." It also asks for a penalty of $5,000 each against Aaron and Kevin Goodwin, and $10,000 against Shannon Goodwin.
Kevin Goodwin pleaded guilty to a disorderly conduct violation in August and paid a fine of over $600; prosecutors dropped a simple assault charge against him. Shannon Goodwin’s case remains open. State police issued a warrant for her earlier this year on three misdemeanor counts of simple assault and a disorderly conduct violation.
The Associated Press left messages seeking comment with Kevin Goodwin and his lawyer, 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. The suit says Dembele 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 been served yet with the lawsuit or the attorney general office'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 determined that he breached 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 should have notified supervisors of the offer. A judge stripped Goodwin of the inheritance, saying the officer was “self-serving” when he befriended the woman, who was in her 90s and had dementia.