Jury acquits cop who slapped handcuffed suspect
Miami-Dade Police Sergeant Manuel Regueiro swore he had no choice but to slap a handcuffed suspect — because the man was about to spit on him.
“You don’t duck,” Regueiro testified at his trial. “Then, you’re a coward.”
Jurors agreed — the slap was not a crime. A Miami-Dade jury on Wednesday afternoon acquitted Regueiro of misdemeanor battery in a case that received widespread attention in South Florida because the incident was captured on video surveillance.
The loss was the latest for the MiamiDade State Attorney’s Office in cases against cops for rough arrests. The state lost two recent trials in which cops were accused of striking or attempting to strike handcuffed suspects.
The recent arrests of South Florida police officers come amid increased national scrutiny on law-enforcement tactics, particularly in cases of officers accused of using excessive force against minorities.
In this case, Regueiro and the victim are both Hispanic.
“Once again the community sided with the heroes,” said C. Michael Cornerly, the sergeant’s defense lawyer. “This was a misguided prosecution. He was only prosecuted because he’s a police officer.”
Jurors deliberated nearly three hours and at one point told the judge that they were deadlocked 3-3. The verdict came nearly one year after the State Attorney’s Office charged Regueiro with misdemeanor battery for slapping the handcuffed man,
Bryan Crespo, during an arrest.
Another Miami-Dade police officer, Alex Gonzalez, was charged with third-degree felony tampering with evidence and misdemeanor petty theft for allegedly stealing part of the video-recording system that captured the slap. He is still awaiting trial.
At trial, jurors heard that Crespo, then 18, was being investigated in March of 2018 for allegedly dealing in stolen airbags. The officers were part of the auto-theft unit attached to the Northwest District Station.
They had arrest warrants for Crespo and two others and were also accompanied by a Spanish-language television news crew on the night of March 15, 2018.
Detectives raided Crespo’s Allapattah home, which had a surveillance camera rolling inside his living room. The footage shows Crespo, shirtless and cuffed, being led away. Then, he heard someone yell his last name, Crespo told jurors.
“I took a glimpse, a look, and I felt a slap. A real hard slap on my face,” Crespo testified on Tuesday. He recalled the slapping officer say: “This is for all the airbags you stole.”
Crespo said he suffered a “busted lip” — and never tried to spit on Regueiro.
The sergeant, taking the stand in his own defense, claimed he “observed” Crespo “gathering phlegm in his mouth.”
“Before he could spit on me, I had to stop that spit from leaving his mouth,” Regueiro testified on Tuesday.