Prosecutors are charging South Florida cops for rough arrests. Jurors keep acquitting them

One Miami police officer kicked at a handcuffed robbery suspect after a foot chase in Overtown. One cop kicked a teen burglary suspect, also handcuffed and lying on the ground during an arrest in Northwest Miami-Dade.

Another Miami-Dade police sergeant slapped a handcuffed car airbag thief who was being escorted to a patrol car. The slap was necessary, the sergeant insisted, because he believed the suspect was about to spit on him.

In each case, the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s office charged the officer criminally after compelling video surfaced of the rough arrests. And in each instance, jurors or a judge acquitted the cops. The latest was Miami-Dade Sgt. Manuel Regueiro, acquitted by jury last week after a three-day trial in the anticipatory spitting case.

“I don’t even know why they charged this,” one juror in the Regueiro case told the Miami Herald. “They didn’t even have evidence, other than the video.”

The string of losses underscores that while South Florida prosecutors are charging more police officers in excessive force cases, convincing jurors to convict cops of crimes remains a difficult sell. And there are more trials to come. At least six police officers in Miami-Dade and Broward counties are facing upcoming trials in state cases stemming from rough arrests.

Lawyers representing police officers say that the string of losses at trial shows that the public, despite social-media fueled outrage spurred by videos, tend to side with cops.

“Many cases are prosecuted because the state commits to social media fury before the full and complete investigation,” said Miami lawyer Robert Buschel, who won an acquittal for Miami-Dade Sgt. Gustavo de los Rios, who was accused of misdemeanor battery for kicking a handcuffed teen in February 2018.

“Many jurors understand after all the evidence is presented, being a police officer is a tough job. The officer has to protect himself, his partners, and everyone else around him.”

The losses come as Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, who has held the position since 1993, is running for another term. Over the decades, critics have assailed her for not charging police officers for using deadly force while on duty.

Her opponent, former prosecutor and American Civil Liberties Union deputy director Melba Pearson, has run on a platform of criminal-justice reform, vowing to hold more police officers accountable for misconduct.

Over the past couple years, Miami-Dade prosecutors have become more aggressive going after cops accused of battering suspects. There still two cases awaiting trial: One Homestead cop who pushed a handcuffed man’s head into a wall inside the police station, the other a Miami-Dade officer who tackled a woman who’d been the victim of an assault.

“When it comes to cases involving potential violations of the law by police officers in use of force cases, our foundational principle is always ‘No one is above the law,’ said Ed Griffith, a Miami-Dade State Attorney’s spokesman. “When we believe that evidence can prove a charge beyond and to the exclusion of a reasonable doubt, we will continue to bring charges before our criminal courts.”

Until recent years, few police officers anywhere in Florida have charges for on-duty force. State law gives cops a wide berth to use force, even allowing them to shoot a “fleeing felon” who may be unarmed, with the presumption they may harm someone in the public if allowed to escape.

The rise of social media and ubiquitous camera phones, however, have helped cast a spotlight on questionable police tactics.

During the past seven years, names such as Eric Garner, choked to death during an encounter with a New York police officer, and Michael Brown, shot to death after a confrontation with a police officer in Missouri, led to protests and the creation of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Miami-Dade found itself under national scrutiny with the July 2016 shooting of Charles Kinsey, an unarmed black caretaker for an autistic man.

That’s when North Miami police rushed to an intersection after a commuter called 911 to report a man possibly armed with a gun. It was actually Arnaldo Rios Soto, a severely autistic man who had wandered away from a group home and sat down in the intersection. In his hand: a silver toy truck.

Kinsey, his caretaker, was trying to corral him back when officers surrounded them. What went viral: Bystander video of Kinsey, laying on the ground, his hands up pleading with police to lower their weapons.

Still, taking cover behind a car about 50 yards away, North Miami Police Officer Jonathon Aledda fired three shots, missing Soto but hitting Kinsey in the thigh. He survived.

“I believed it was a hostage situation,” Aledda later testified. “It appeared he was screaming for mercy or for help or something. In my mind, the white male had a gun.”

Months later, Fernandez Rundle announced charges of felony attempted manslaughter and culpable negligence against Aledda.

The first trial, in March 2019, ended with the jury deadlocked on three counts, and acquitting Aledda of one misdemeanor count of culpable negligence. Four months later, another jury cleared Aledda of the felony counts, but convicted him of the remaining culpable negligence count. A Miami-Dade judge sentenced Aledda to probation.

The State Attorney’s Office has won one other trial. Jurors last year convicted Miami police officer Lester Bohnenblust of battery for throwing a Jackson Memorial Hospital nurse to the ground. The cop, in uniform, had been trying to convince the hospital to admit his niece for a psychiatric evaluation.

Bohnenblust was sentenced to 45 days in jail.

In the Aledda and Bohnenblust cases, prosecutors enjoyed a major advantage: wholly sympathetic victims, law-abiding citizens who didn’t face being jailed. But in each of their three losses, Miami-Dade prosecutors had to present victims who were convicted criminals..

“Any person can be the victim of a crime. But in many of these cases, you don’t have an inherently sympathetic victim because the person is being arrested for a crime,” said retired Miami-Dade prosecutor Reid Rubin, who was on the team that tried both Aledda trials.

Guilty verdicts in rough-arrest cases have been equally challenging in Broward County.

Three years ago, a Broward jury acquitted former Fort Lauderdale police officer Victor Ramirez for the slap of a homeless man, an incident that was caught on video and sparked public outrage.

Last summer, three Broward deputies were charged for their roles in the violent arrest of 15-year-old Delucca Rolle. Video of the arrest outside a Tamarac McDonald’s drew criticism from sports stars such as Lebron James and NFL receiver Kenny Stills. Two deputies are awaiting trial but one, Ralph Mackey, was already acquitted last September of allegations he falsified a police report about the incident.

Even in the rare civil trial — in which a cops don’t face potential jail time — jurors are loath to rule against police officers.

Last fall, a federal jury refused to award damages to the family of hospital worker David Alexis, who was shot to death by an undercover Miami-Dade detective on a stakeout. Alexis’ attorneys said the slain man mistook the detective for a possible burglar, while county attorneys said Alexis refused to put down his weapon.

Over the past five years, the Miami-Dade County Attorney’s Office has won at least four federal civil trials involving police-shooting cases.

South Florida isn’t alone.

Nationally, despite video evidence, it’s not unusual for jurors to clear officers accused of excessive force while on duty. Experts caution that each case, in each city, is unique — and they don’t always fit neatly along racial lines.

When a Hispanic officer shot and killed motorist Philando Castile in Minnesota, he was charged with manslaughter. The case drew outrage because Castile was complying with orders from the officer, and part of the traffic stop was broadcast live by Castile’s girlfriend.

The jury, which included two black jurors, acquitted the officer.

The stark contrast between the depiction of a cop and a criminal can weigh on a jury, experts say, especially if the jurors see themselves as fellow law-abiding citizens, social scientists say.

“If you are seeing police officers as being part of your group, your tribe of sorts, you’re more inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt,” said Calvin Li, a psychologist and professor at Washington University in St. Louis who studies hidden or implicit racial biases, particularly among police officers.

In use-of-force cases, trials also afford jurors a more thorough look at the incident than the snippets seen on social media, said Walter Signorelli, a professor of police science at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

“People understand that a cop is doing his job. It’s not like he’s getting up in the morning and saying he wants to go beat someone up,” said Signorelli, a lawyer and former New York police officer.

In Regueiro’s case, the Miami-Dade sergeant was accused of misdemeanor battery for slapping Bryan Crespo, a suspected ringleader in a band of car airbag thieves. Jarring surveillance video showed Regueiro slapping Crespo as he was being led out during a raid of his Allapattah apartment. Both men are Hispanic.

During trial, defense attorney C. Michael Cornely cast the decision as one between “good versus evil” — Crespo, the calculating felon still in jail while suing the police department, Regueiro the decorated police officer and former military solider trying to subdue a combative would-be spitter.

The jury consisted of three men, and three women, two of whom were black. At first, the jury deadlocked by a vote of 3-3. About an hour later, all six agreed to clear Regueiro.

“Everything was done properly, according to the law,” the jury’s foreperson told the Herald. “We were very fair.”

Still, the jury’s decision left Crespo’s family reeling.

“I don’t know why a police officer can’t be convicted for breaking the law just like any other person,” said Crespo’s mother, Verena Caria.

Cam Cornish, the lawyer representing Crespo in a lawsuit against the police, said jurors “will do extreme mental gymnastics to give the benefit of the doubt to police officers.”

“That comes directly from our need to feel safe. Communities want to believe the best of their police officers, their protectors,” he said. “Otherwise, they would be living in a world where their ostensible protectors become bullying victimizers of the poor and the powerless. That’s a world people sometimes choose not to believe in because, for them, living in denial is easier than living with a terrible truth.”

This story was originally published February 7, 2020 at 6:00 AM.