‘This Was a Hate Crime’: White Ex-Cop and Relative Assaulted Two Black Men While Hurling Racial Slurs In Unprovoked Attack, But New Hampshire City Took Nearly a Year to Bring Charges

New Hampshire’s attorney general filed a civil rights complaint against a former police officer accused of assaulting a Black bank executive last year in downtown Portsmouth. The action, filed Oct. 29 in Rockingham County Superior Court, alleges former Portsmouth police sergeant Aaron Goodwin was motivated by race when he assaulted Mamadou Dembele outside Gilley’s Diner last November. Goodwin was not serving as an officer at the time of the incident, having been fired from the Portsmouth Police Department in 2015 over accusations he inappropriately influenced an elderly woman with dementia to name him as the beneficiary of her $2 million estate. Aaron Goodwin (Photo: New Hampshire State Police) Meanwhile, the civil complaint alleges that two of Goodwin’s relatives — his brother Kevin Goodwin and sister-in-law Shannon Goodwin, who were visiting from Maryland — violated the civil rights of a second, unidentified Black man who attempted to help Dembele. “The evidence demonstrates that race and/or national origin motivated [the Goodwins’] conduct,” the complaint states. In a separate federal lawsuit, Dembele accused Aaron Goodwin of assault and battery, claiming lasting physical and psychological harm, including concussion symptoms and post-traumatic stress disorder. The attorney general’s office filed four charges under the New Hampshire...