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Nicholas M. Hoar, 35, is charged with deprivation of rights under color of law and two counts of false reports for the alleged 2020 assault, the US Attorney for Massachusetts said. He potentially faces 50 years in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines if convicted, officials added.
The prosecutor alleges that Hoar hit a man across the forehead with his baton on Dec. 21, 2020, and then omitted that information from his reports. Officials didn't say if the suspect was injured.
The Herald News reported the then 55-year-old suspect was in custody for allegedly hitting his girlfriend. The man alleged in a lawsuit that Hoar hit him with a baton and shoved his head into a door as the officer walked him to a van outside the police station, the newspaper reported. The Fall River Police Department settled that lawsuit for $65,000 earlier this year, reports said.
Hoar is at the center of a $34 million lawsuit from the family of a 19-year-old New Bedford man that the officer shot and killed in 2017 in Fall River, the Herald News reported. An independent review of that shooting cleared Hoar of any wrongdoing, but the lawsuit alleges a cover-up, the report said.
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