Two Hialeah police officers were arrested this thursdaykidnapping and beating a helpless man and left him unconscious last December, according to authorities reports.
Rafael Quiñones Otaño, 27 years old, andLorenzo Rafael Orfila Rodríguez, 22, kidnapped on December 17Jose Ortega Gutierrez, a 50-year-old homeless person, handcuffed him and brutally attacked him.
The agents are charged with the crime of armed kidnapping, a misdemeanor of first-degree injury; Orfila also faces a charge of official misconduct by a public official,declared at a press conference the state prosecutorKatherine Fernandez Rundle.
A third defendant, Ali Amin Saleh, 45, has been charged with witness tampering.
The three culprits were taken into custody this Thursday and the agents were also fired by the mayor of Hialeah, Esteban Bovo.
According to arrest reports that the State Attorney's Office sent toCyberCuba, the incident occurred last December 17, when police officers were sent to the Los Tres Conejitos bakery, located at 1912 West 60th Street, in relation to an altercation.
Upon arriving at the scene, Orfila handcuffed the victim, who used to wander around the shopping plaza; They then put him in the back of the patrol car and took him to an isolated area, which is outside their sector, where they beat him until he was unconscious.
The victim told detectives that he woke up alone in that area and without the handcuffs. He then started walking south until he ran into someone who called 911.
Orfila later asked the officer who responded to the emergency call about the victim's status and asked him to list her as "not reported," to which the officer refused.
Twelve days after the incident, Ortega Gutiérrez notified detectives that he was approached by Saleh, a civilian whom he had seen before, and asked him to sign a statement in English and Spanish about his encounter with officers and, in exchange, he would give him 1,200 dollars.
The victim, who does not know how to read those languages, signed the affidavit without knowing its contents because he needed the money.
According to prosecutor Fernández Rundle, the officers' affidavit stated that the victim had been arrested for drinking in public and the officers had not beaten him.
The document was even notarized, but he admitted that he did it as a favor to Saleh without the victim being present.
Although the agents did not turn on their body cameras during the entire encounter with the detainee, surveillance videos showed that Ortega Gutiérrez did nothing for which he should have been arrested that day and corroborates the testimony about the bribe offered by Saleh.
According to the arrest warrants, this Wednesday the judge of the Eleventh District Court of Miami-Dade, Mindy Glazer, set bail for the police officers at $1,500 for the assault, but did not grant the right to bail for the crime of kidnapping. .
Orfila must also post a $5,000 misconduct bond. Saleh, on the other hand, was not granted bail for the witness tampering charge.
Several cases of police violence in South Florida have come to light recently. In December, a lieutenant with the City of Miami Fire Department was capturedbeating a man who was handcuffed on a stretcher.
That same month, the Tampa Police Departmentofficer fired for dragging a detainee and violating multiple policies for the treatment of people in custody.
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