Miami police video shows cuffed man dragged on floor. Review panel signs off on suspensions
More than two years after the arrest of a man who police said was disrupting an ongoing investigation, newly released body camera footage shows the man taunting officers before being grabbed by the throat and later being dragged by his handcuffs across a hospital floor.
Miami’s civilian police oversight panel released the police body camera footage last week after its investigation found two officers had used excessive force in the arrest of Georges Auguste and that one of them failed to mention it in the arrest report. The Civilian Investigative Panel also said a third officer should not have taken off her body camera and that she failed to intervene in the confrontation.
The 11-member panel has no disciplinary authority and can only make recommendations to Miami’s police chief. The board’s findings, for the most part, mirrored an Internal Affairs review into the same arrest that was completed in late November. Those findings previously led to the discipline of two officers.
Sgt. Gary Sampson was given a 60-hour suspension by Miami Police Chief Manny Morales after investigators found he had used excessive force by grabbing Auguste’s throat. And Officer Bens Mocombe was suspended for 40 hours for dragging him by his handcuffs across the floor at Jackson Memorial Hospital while he was also shackled.
Where the CIP differed from the internal review was its finding on police officer Elouse Joseph, who wasn’t disciplined by Internal Affairs, but who the civilian panel said among other things, should not have taken off her body camera.
“She also didn’t intervene or help to de-escalate,” said CIP Director Rodney Jacobs.
One officer who testified during the Internal Affairs probe cautioned that it’s much easier to dissect each decision made on the video second-by-second, than to deal with it in real time.
“It happened so quickly. He wasn’t going for the guy’s neck, it’s just what he ended up grabbing,” said Miami Police Sgt. Stanley Jean-Poix, who also serves as president of the city’s Black police union. “This guy came out of nowhere.”
Also questioning the dissection of the footage was the city’s new Fraternal Order of Police President Felix Del Rosario. He said he’s known Sampson for decades and he’s always been hard-working and productive.
Too often, “people only see the small window [of a confrontation] and not the whole picture from beginning to the end and how fast it happens,” Del Rosario said.
According to Auguste’s arrest report, eyewitness accounts and the body camera footage, police were called to 6827 NW Fifth Ct., at about 8 p.m. on Dec. 8, 2021, over a domestic violence incident. Jean-Poix said a man and a woman had been arguing and that someone had been cut and police had the man in the back of a patrol car. Jean-Poix said it was only when the crowd of people who had gathered began telling police that it was the woman’s fault that Auguste came into the picture.
According to his arrest report, shortly after police arrived Auguste said he had something for them and went to his home to retrieve it. When he came back out, police camera footage shows Auguste holding his cellphone camera in Sampson’s face, pointing a finger at the officer, taunting him and swearing at him.
During the internal affairs review, Sampson admitted he grew frustrated with Auguste and said that’s when he grabbed him by the throat and shoved him up against a fence. Auguste was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest with violence. Later that evening at the hospital, Mocombe is seen on police camera footage dragging Auguste — who police said had gone to the ground and was handcuffed and shackled — across the floor at Jackson Memorial Hospital.
Jacobs said he was more concerned with how police dealt with Auguste at the hospital than during the initial encounter. The CIP director wondered why Auguste wasn’t placed in a wheelchair or restrained less violently. He also said, though dealing with doctors is outside his agency’s purview, that the medical community should play a larger role in looking out for possible police misconduct.
“A victim of excessive force will go the hospital. And if an officer says he tripped over a shoelace ... those are the cases that doctors and physicians should be reporting to us and Internal Affairs — and they don’t,” said Jacobs.
This story was originally published February 24, 2023 at 1:50 PM.
