A cop pulled a gun on a father at a Miami school. Prosecutors say the arrest was wrong

Two months ago, an argument between two parents at a North Miami-Dade elementary school resulted in a county police officer pulling a gun on one father, who wound up arrested — for refusing to give his name to cops.

Prosecutors have now dropped the case against that father, Lazaro Gonzalez, saying he broke no law and pointing out that video of the episode didn’t match what police wrote in the arrest report. He’d been charged with misdemeanor resisting without violence.

The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office Public Corruption Unit is now reviewing the case, to see if police officers violated any laws in their handling of the Feb. 11 incident.

The incident happened at Lakeview, 1290 NW 115th St., where Gonalez’s child had been involved in “some disputes” with another child over bullying, according to a final memo on the case. That day, Gonzalez was dropping off his child, accompanied by his leashed dog.

Gonzalez got into “some sort of verbal dispute” with the mother of the other child. That’s when Miami-Dade Police Officer Carlos Baez appeared, saying he’d been flagged down by the mother.

Bystander video, first aired by WSVN-7, showed Baez with his gun drawn in front of the crowd of parents dropping off their kids. He claimed he drew his gun after Gonzalez refused to give his name, began walking away and “due to the unpredictable behavior the dog could [have] displayed due to the owner’s belligerent behavior.”

But video showed Gonzalez, 34, was not acting belligerently at all and the dog “was well behaved,” the memo said. Prosecutors determined that Gonzalez didn’t break any state law during his interaction with officers, and had actually given his name to another cop.

“Mr. Gonzalez was not hindering an investigation at the time of his arrest. Where the police know the identity of the defendant, he cannot obstruct their investigation by failing to provide his name,” wrote Assistant State Attorney Christine Zahralban, the head of the legal unit.

Miami-Dade Interim Police Chief George Perez referred the case to the State Attorney’s Office, which reviewed the case under its “Justice Project.” Perez, in his March 3 letter, expressed concern that a review of the police body-worn camera “indicates discrepancies with the reports as written.”

South Florida prosecutors, as police tactics nationally have come under scrutiny in recent years, have taken a harder line on busting officers who lie on reports, although convictions for “official misconduct” remain rare. Last week, a Miami jury convicted a county police officer, Alejandro Giraldo, for tackling a woman, then lying on the report.

Gonzalez, who has been freed from jail for several weeks, is on felony probation for a 2013 cocaine trafficking conviction. Prosecutors said they would not be seeking to revoke his probation because of the false arrest at the school.

This story was originally published April 19, 2022 at 10:42 AM with the headline "A cop pulled a gun on a father at a Miami school. Prosecutors say the arrest was wrong."