Clash with cop sours D.C. couple on Orlando

Officer is charged after man’s windshield was smashed, causing injury

James and Antoine Taylor have been vacationing in Orlando for years, making the trek from Washington, D.C., to enjoy the warm weather and theme parks.

But the couple said they won’t be returning after a July run-in with Orlando Police Department Officer Gabriel Pagan, who is accused of smashing the windshield of their rental car with a two-by-four block of wood as they drove from downtown to their hotel one night.

In an interview with the Orlando Sentinel on Monday, James Taylor — who found a piece of glass in his eye after the incident — said Orlando used to be his family’s “home away from home” and has been their vacation destination for the past five years.

The couple traveled without their children for the July trip but had another vacation planned for April with their kids, which they have since canceled, he said.

“I refuse to come back there. I don’t trust it,” Taylor said.

After a lengthy criminal investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Pagan, 26, was arrested Friday on four felony charges: aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, criminal mischief and two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. He has been stripped of his police powers but remains on paid administrative duties, OPD said.

In interviews with FDLE Special Agent David Snowden, three

OPD officers who were with Pagan July 17 said they responded to his call for backup on Orange Avenue and Washington Street about 2 a.m., where a man was swinging around a twoby-four. The officers said Pagan, who was patrolling the area by bicycle, was able to take the block from the man before they all left the call in different directions.

Not long after, Pagan was seen on security cameras from nearby Independent Bar riding in the center lane on Washington Street as James and Antoine Taylor drove up behind him in their 2017 Ford Mustang rental, Snowden wrote in the investigative report. Pagan then got off his bike and put the kickstand down, the report shows.

James Taylor said he thought Pagan was stopping to let them drive around him, so he passed by slowly on Pagan’s right side.

But the officer then “walked towards the Mustang and struck the front windshield area with the

2x4,” Snowden wrote in the report.

James Taylor, who was driving, said he was scared and confused when the windshield shattered. He didn’t know what the officer threw, but saw “the impact of something come down on the window and felt the glass shatter down on me,” he said

He said he felt a pain in his eye, but said his first reaction was to “get the hell back to the hotel.”

He later discovered a piece of glass in his right eye, which his husband was able to remove. But pain and swelling followed and his vision is now permanently damaged, he said.

The incident left him feeling “a lot of anxiety” and distrustful of law enforcement in Orlando, he said. Taylor said he believes he and his husband, who are black, were profiled for their race and sexual orientation.

He said he has been in contact with OPD’s Internal Affairs investigators since July and has called FDLE and the State Attorney’s Office regularly to get updates on his case. He questioned why it took four months to bring charges against the officer

when there was video of the incident.

“They knew there was truth from the beginning,” Taylor said. “It just put me off guard to know that for the past four months, that this guy is being paid when you guys knew from the beginning that this was the truth.”

OPD said in an email Friday that it “launched an internal investigation immediately” upon learning of the allegation against Pagan and soon turned the case over to FDLE for “for an outside review for any possible criminal violations.”

Spokeswoman Lt. Wanda Miglio said the agency is “committed to thoroughly investigating all the facts and evidence surrounding this incident” and that “[u]ntil an internal investigation is completed not all details or facts about the case will be known.”

In its Friday news release announcing that Pagan had been stripped of his police duties, OPD provided no information about the allegations against the officer.