Rough arrest of Miami-Dade woman still harrowing to watch, no matter what court ruled | Opinion

A former Miami-Dade Police officer may have gotten a clean slate after an appeals court this week overturned his 2022 conviction on charges of battering a woman during a rough arrest and lying on an arrest report. But images of his actions, caught on video, will live forever on the internet and in the minds of many people in South Florida.

Florida’s Third District Court of Appeals found that the prosecutors’ argument that Alejandro Giraldo falsified the arrest form was “subjective,” and that, because intent to falsify could not be proven, the battery charge should also be dismissed, the Herald reported on Thursday.

But that doesn’t make the harrowing footage of the former field training officer, taken by police body camera and a bystander video, any less disturbing. With the possibility that Giraldo — who was in charge of training other officers — could ask for his job back, it’s on the Police Department — and a new sheriff who will be elected in November — to ensure something similar won’t happen again.

Giraldo’s 2019 encounter with Dyma Loving, a Black woman who called the police claiming a man pointed a gun at her, should not have ended the way it did — and even people in law enforcement have agreed.

Loving and a friend were clearly upset and angry as responding officers peppered them with questions, but the videos don’t show her presenting a threat to them. During the interaction, Giraldo threatens her with a Baker Act — the temporary detention of people impaired by mental illness — telling her he doesn’t like the tone of her voice, that she’s acting disorderly.

After Loving asks, “Why do I have to be corrected when my life is in danger?”officers push her toward a fence and then to the ground before arresting her. It’s as if Loving was the suspect, and not the person who called 911 to report an alleged crime.

The president of the South Florida Police Benevolent Association, Steadman Stahl, told the Herald on Thursday that “Myself and others were disappointed in what we saw” in the video. Then-Police Director Juan Perez, who fired Giraldo, said in 2019 he found “the actions depicted on the video very troubling.” He told the Herald on Thursday he was surprised by the appellate court’s decision.

Giraldo apologized to Dyma during his 2022 trial, at which he was sentenced to 364 days in jail. His lawyer told NBC6 on Thursday, “He certainly of course wishes that this whole event did not happen both for her and for himself.”

Were Loving a white man, and not a young Black woman, would she have been treated differently by police?

In an arrest report, Giraldo called her “belligerent,” “irate” and stated “she began to scream at us causing a scene.”

The District Court of Appeals found that “Giraldo’s subjective account of the events depicted doesn’t rise to the level of knowing or intentional falsification” of the report and that “causing a scene” is a matter of perception — though it’s hard not to draw a link between those words and the stereotype of the angry Black woman. To prove the official misconduct felony charge, the state had to prove Giraldo “knowingly and intentionally falsified” the document.

To make the optics of this case worse for police, the white man that Loving and her friend said pointed a gun at them was not initially arrested. He was taken into custody more than a week after the incident. Police blamed the delay on having to continue to interview witnesses and preparing a risk protection order to ask a judge for permission to seize his weapons, the Herald reported in 2019.

Loving was arrested but charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest without violence were later dropped. The State Attorney’s Office said at the time, “those charges could not be supported by the evidence.”

“I ask that you do not define me based on the six-minute video,” Giraldo said in a statement at his sentencing hearing. From a legal point of view, he got what he wanted but trust in police is a lot harder to rebuild.

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