Miami cop who pressed arm in area of man’s neck cleared
Miami police said they would take no action against an officer who appeared to use a neck restraint technique on a suspected watch thief during an arrest in downtown Miami on Monday that was recorded on a cellphone camera.
A statement released by the agency Tuesday afternoon, after reviewing the arrest report, the video and the response to resistance report, said that the officer used the proper amount of force when he appeared to press his forearm into the side of the man’s neck three times to subdue him outside of Miami’s Seybold Jewelry Building.
“We have determined that the gentleman was not in any level of distress, suggesting that he could not breathe. Instead, he was trying to incite a crowd while resisting officers, who were simply trying to handcuff him,” the department said in the statement. “The responding officers only used the force necessary and in accordance with Miami police policy in order to subdue and arrest the individual.”
The officer’s name was not released.
In a nearly four-minute cellphone video taken by a bystander, as many as six Miami police officers can be seen pinning Roberto Casado, 37, to the ground as one of the officers presses his right forearm into the side of the man’s neck at least three times, but never for more than 10 seconds at a time.
Still, in the video, Casado can be heard saying what has become the cry of the latest police reform movement, “I can’t breathe.”
“Bro, I can’t breathe. I’ve got asthma,” Casado complains. At that point the officer pressing his forearm into Casado’s neck, pulls his arm away. Then he presses into Casado’s neck again, this time for six seconds, before one of the officers says “stop resisting.”
Eventually, eight officers responded to the incident and after about two minutes Casado was turned over, handcuffed and placed against a patrol vehicle. At the three-minute mark, he was placed inside it. He did not appear to be injured. Police said Casado bit the hand of one of the officers who was trying to subdue him.
The Miami Herald obtained the video from a third party. Both the person who shot the video and the person who supplied it to the Herald wanted to remain anonymous.
Controversial chokehold maneuvers to subdue a suspect have become flashpoints in the latest reform movement against police, one that has swept the country since the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, which was captured on cellphone video. In it, Floyd repeatedly begs for his life as officer Derek Chauvin presses his knee into Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes. Then Floyd stops breathing and dies. Chauvin, who was fired, has been charged with second-degree murder.
Since then several police departments around the country — including Miami-Dade and Hialeah, locally — have banned any type of neck restraint, unless it’s used as deadly force and to save a life. Miami police banned the practice after a 1992 incident in which a man who was taken into custody by police for parking illegally went into a coma and died after an officer applied a chokehold. The city paid out what was then the largest police settlement in U.S. history, $7.5 million.
It’s a constraint technique similar to one applied to Eric Garner by a New York City officer in 2014 looking into a call that Garner was selling cigarettes on the street. Garner was killed after repeatedly telling officers, “I can’t breathe,” words that became a slogan for the Black Lives Matter movement. A medical examiner’s report found the chokehold, which is banned by NYPD, contributed to his death.
In Casado’s arrest report, police say they made the arrest after he got into a physical fight with the owner of a jewelry store in the street over an expensive watch. Police said witnesses told them after the fight Casado picked up a wooden stick and smashed the window of a store on Northeast First Avenue between Flagler and First Street. Police said when they arrived they spotted Casado across the street from the store, but he refused to obey their orders and resisted arrest.
Police said the store owner said he gave Casado a watch valued at $14,500 and that he was supposed to return with the money. He didn’t, the store owner said. The store owner also said he became upset when he saw Casado posting a picture of himself wearing the watch on social media over the weekend. He subsequently refused to pay for it, which led to the fight, the store owner told police.
A man who identified himself as the manager of CRM Jewelry, the high-end Rolex watch store where witnesses said the fight originated, said no one would comment on Monday’s incident. The store was not named in Casado’s arrest report.
Casado was arrested Monday afternoon and charged with aggravated battery, grand theft, resisting police with and without violence and disorderly conduct. His bond was set at $74,500. It was unclear Tuesday if he was still in jail.