Officer who was accused of excessive force during arrest cleared of charge

A West Palm Beach officer who was arrested in February stemming from an arrest outside of a convenience store three years earlier has been cleared of any criminal charges.

Officer Nicholas Lordi and Officer Jamesloo Charles arrived at the Food Plus Food Stores at 5501 Broadway on a night in November 2019 after police were called about a man trespassing.

The officers found John Monroque, 65, outside the store that night, where he was being “uncooperative and belligerent,” a closeout memorandum from the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office says, and that Monroque had trespassed there before.

The closeout memo released Wednesday explaining why no charges will be filed says the officers used the amount of force necessary to react to “what they perceived as an immediate threat of serious harm to themselves.”

The memo contradicts some of the findings of a Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation into the incident and notes that surveillance video from the convenience store that law enforcement and the public saw of the arrest may have been edited.

Surveillance video from the store “initially provided to law enforcement and released to the public appears to have been edited and relevant portions removed,” the memo says. It is not immediately clear what portions had been edited from the surveillance video or who edited the video given to law enforcement.

Marc Freeman, a spokesperson for the State Attorney’s Office, wrote in an email Thursday that an edited version of the surveillance video from the convenience store had been posted online that did not show the entire struggle between Monroque and the officers. The body-worn camera footage is what shows the officers asking Monroque to comply multiple times, along with Monroque grabbing Charles’ face as one of the handcuffs dangled from his arm and Charles shouting “gun!” believing Monroque was reaching for his gun belt.

“The urgency of the situation and the inability to control the subject is clearly indicated by the video and audio of the body worn camera. After the initial arrest of Officer Lordi, we were provided all videos, edited and unedited, by FDLE when they submitted the case to our office for a filing decision,” Freeman’s email said.

“We are not making an allegation that FDLE watched different videos in making their probable cause decision. There is a higher standard for our office in filing charges than probable cause,” the email said.

FDLE said late Wednesday that the video its investigators reviewed had not been edited. “The video that FDLE has is unedited,” FDLE said. “We got the video directly from the convenience store. We did no editing.”

The officers’ body-worn camera footage shows Monroque appeared to be “intoxicated and was launching racial slurs at both Lordi, who is white, and Charles, who is Black,” says the memo written by State Attorney Reid Scott.

The memorandum says Lordi and Charles “maintained a calm and professional tone” and that Monroque was seen “flailing his arms and nearly striking Lordi in the face

multiple times.”

The body-worn camera footage the South Florida Sun Sentinel received from the State Attorney’s Office shows Monroque shouting expletives at Lordi and Charles throughout the encounter. Lordi explained to Monroque that he was running his ID and needed to wait.

While the officers are waiting, Monroque laid on the ground with his hands behind his head and continued to shout at the officers.

“I can’t understand you, man,” Lordi said.

“F--- you!” Monroque said.

“I understood that,” Lordi responded.

“F--- off!” Monroque shouted back.

Once Monroque stood up from the ground, Charles walked toward a patrol car, the video shows. Monroque continued to shout obscenities at Lordi before turning and walking toward where Charles was sitting in his car.

That’s when Lordi grabbed Monroque and the struggle ensued.

Lordi made a quick decision to detain Monroque, the memo says, after he “appeared to advance toward Officer Charles” while Charles was in his patrol car checking Monroque’s ID and raised his right hand while near a bystander, making Lordi believe Monroque may have been about to hit the bystander.

Lordi then attempted to put Monroque in handcuffs as he resisted. The memo says Lordi told Monroque over 10 times to put his hands behind his back. The surveillance video showed Monroque resisting and fighting.

The closeout memo says body-worn camera footage shows Charles shouting “gun!” sounding concerned and that “the unedited surveillance video from the convenience store clearly shows” Monroque reaching for Charles’ belt where his gun was. The struggle continued, knocking Charles’ body-worn camera onto the ground, and Monroque reached down.

Charles and Monroque started fighting for the object that fell to the ground, although neither knew what it was at the time, the memo says. Charles had a reasonable belief that his gun had fallen and that Monroque was reaching for the gun.

Once the three were taken to the ground, bodyworn camera footage showed Monroque “had his hand over Officer Charles’ face, pulling him downwards with his fingers in Charles’ mouth and eyes,” the memo says.

The memo says a bystander intervened to prevent Monroque from continuing to hit Charles. Lordi then sat on top of Monroque and hit him four times while Charles stood up and drew a Taser but did not use it.

The struggle lasted 22 seconds from the time Monroque reached for Charles’ belt and his being detained, according to the memo.

Monroque spat blood at the officers after he was handcuffed, the memo says, and Lordi was heard on body-worn camera footage telling him to stop before he again got on top of Monroque for less than 12 seconds to get him to stop spitting.

Lordi did not put his full weight on Monroque’s face or throat during the arrest, the memo says.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement began investigating the incident in May 2020, and a probable cause affidavit from February describes the encounter differently.

The FDLE affidavit does not mention Monroque grabbing Charles’ face and bringing him to the ground. The affidavit mentions that Lordi in his deposition said Monroque “began grabbing” Charles’ ammunition but does not mention that body-worn camera footage showed Monroque reaching for Charles’ gun belt as the closeout memo says that footage “clearly shows.”

The FDLE affidavit also says the bystander who intervened did so in order to block Lordi from continuing to hit Monroque, rather than to block Monroque from hitting Charles.

The investigator determined Lordi used excessive force by punching Monroque 11 times and kneeling on his head after he was already handcuffed and found there was enough cause to arrest Lordi on a felony aggravated battery charge. The closeout memo says Lordi threw four punches.

Monroque was taken to the hospital and had a broken nose, the memo says. It also notes Monroque had gone to trauma centers three times in a 23-day period before the incident “for face and head trauma.”

The State Attorney’s Office memo says the officers had a right to use deadly force in their encounter with Monroque and showed restraint by using non-deadly force.

“Given the totality of the circumstances, Officers Lordi and Charles would have been justified even in the use of deadly force” based on Monroque’s actions, the memo says.

“I am glad this is behind Mr. Lordi and I look forward to him going back to his job and getting his life on with,” attorney Michael Salnick, who represented Lordi, said in an email Wednesday.

Lordi has been on administrative duty since February. The police department conducted its own use-offorce investigation after the incident based on the officers’ body-worn camera videos and found they violated no policies, said Adam Myers, president of the Fraternal Order of Police West Palm Beach.

Myers said once the video from the convenience store was released months later, Chief of Police Frank Adderley asked FDLE to investigate. Myers pointed out that the video had been edited and said he felt FDLE’s investigation was not thorough, in part, because investigators reviewed the convenience store surveillance video that the closeout memo says was edited.

“Ultimately from our position as the Fraternal Order of Police, the decision of the State Attorney’s Office not to file charges is completely appropriate, and initially we don’t believe the incident warranted criminal charges even to begin with,” Myers said. “This was a potentially deadly force situation … There were facts in the case that FDLE completely ignored to obtain the outcome they clearly wanted — to pursue charges against him.”

The FDLE probable cause affidavit says multiple times that the surveillance video contradicts some of the things Lordi said happened that night in a deposition he gave in July 2020. Myers said Lordi was never lying and told the investigator he didn’t have a solid memory of the incident.

“He says several times in [the deposition,] ‘I don’t remember. I don’t remember.’ So ultimately what this comes down to is this is not a thorough investigation. The initial decision to file charges was very reckless,” Myers said.

Attorney Sue-Ann Robinson, who represented Monroque, said in an email Wednesday that saying the video had been edited is a “fake narrative the police union has been putting out since we brought attention to the case” and that FDLE relied on its own, independent investigation to arrive at the conclusion to arrest Lordi. Robinson said the video clearly showed excessive use of force.

“It’s sad and loaded to suggest that the only truly independent agency involved would do otherwise,” Robinson wrote. “The lengths they are willing to go to protect an unhinged officer who has RECORD of abusive behavior while on duty is scary.”

Robinson said she is “going to pursue legal remedies certainly against the state for violating John’s rights as a victim.”