CONCORD, NH — A white former New Hampshire police officer has been charged with a racially motivated attack on a black bank manager outside a restaurant on Thanksgiving Eve 2023, according to a civil rights complaint filed by the state attorney general’s office .

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

To establish a violation of the New Hampshire Civil Rights Act, 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 actually using physical force or violence against him with reason.” of race”. , color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity or disability,” according to state law.

Goodwin pleaded guilty to a felony charge of simple assault last month after meeting the man, identified as “MD” by the attorney general’s office, 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 because there are no comments that can be attributed to Aaron Goodwin that are racist in any way, shape or form,” his attorney, John Durkin, said in a phone interview on Wednesday.

He said Goodwin responded the way he did because he felt his safety and the safety of his relatives were threatened. “It had nothing to do with race,” he said.

Goodwin, of Eliot, Maine, and his relatives, from Maryland, first encountered Dembele inside the restaurant, where they were all waiting to get food.

The sister-in-law asked where he was from, and he answered Africa. The brother then called him an “imbecile,” saying Africa is 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 crazy man,” and he said the man was too poor to afford a good cigar, the complaint said. The brother then made a drug-related comment about cigars and black people, the complaint said.

Goodwin and his relatives eventually left. When Dembele left, he met 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 one point, Aaron Goodwin pulled Dembele to the ground, the complaint says.

The attorney general’s office filed a separate civil rights complaint against Kevin Goodwin, accusing him of calling Dembele racial slurs and pushing 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 calling the man racial slurs and punching him in the chest and face.

The attorney general’s office is asking the judge for a preliminary restraining order “to protect victims and the public from the Goodwins.” It also seeks a $5,000 penalty 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 more than $600 in fines; 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 counts of simple assault and a disorderly conduct violation.

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 neglect, assault and battery. The cost says Dembele suffered a concussion, a ruptured left Achilles tendon that required surgery and “other physical and psychological injuries.”

Durkin said Aaron Goodwin has not yet received 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 violated the department’s code of ethics and duties manual. police.

The panel concluded that Goodwin should have refused an elderly woman’s offer to leave her fortune and should have informed supervisors of the offer. A judge stripped Goodwin of his inheritance, saying the officer was “self-serving” when he befriended the woman, who was in her 90s and suffered from dementia.