MIAMI — Jurors on Thursday convicted a Miami-Dade police officer who was accused of unlawfully tackling a woman to the ground, then writing an arrest report riddled with lies.
The jury deliberated slightly more than an hour in convicting Alejandro Giraldo of charges of battery and official misconduct.
Prosecutors had charged Giraldo after body-camera footage emerged showing him tackling a woman named Dyma Loving, who had called police in March 2019 to report that a neighbor in South Miami-Dade had pointed a shotgun at her. Instead, Loving wound up in handcuffs and jailed after she and Giraldo traded heated words.
The footage of a Black woman and crime victim roughed up by a Latino police officer sparked outrage among community groups, while Giraldo’s defense attorney insisted he acted lawfully only to subdue an unruly woman interfering with an investigation.
The jury consisted of two Black women, one Latina and three Latino men.
“We’re disappointed,” defense attorney Andre Rouviere said afterward. “We thought we’d established they couldn’t prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt. I guess the jury saw it a different way. We have to accept the jury’s verdict.”
Giraldo will be sentenced in the coming months. He faces up to five years in prison on the felony, but would likely receive less because he is a first-time offender.
The trial took place nearly three years after the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office first charged Giraldo in what has been a slew of prosecutions of officers for rough arrests.
As protests and concerns have mounted across the country over police tactics in recent years, South Florida prosecutors have become more aggressive in targeting cops suspected of using excessive force.
At least nine police officers from four different police agencies in Miami-Dade County are awaiting trial on allegations they battered suspects while on the line of duty. That includes five Miami Beach cops accused of unlawfully attacking a handcuffed suspect in the lobby of a South Beach hotel.
But in Miami-Dade, the state’s track record on similar cases has not been stellar.
Three officers in separate cases have been acquitted at trials since 2019, underscoring the difficulty in convicting officers who are given wide leeway under the law to use force to make arrests.
The most high profile conviction was that of North Miami police officer Jonathon Aledda, who fired his weapon at an autistic man holding a silver toy truck, hitting the man’s caretaker whom he believed had been taken hostage. But in February, a Miami appeals court overturned the conviction. Prosecutors declined to try the case again.
In Broward County, results haven’t been much better.
In February, an appeals court affirmed a trial court’s ruling that a Broward Sheriff’s deputy acted in self-defense in roughing up a teen during an arrest (he still faces charges related to allegedly falsifying the police report). This month, a jury acquitted Broward deputy Kevin Fanti of allegations he broke the law in punching a handcuffed detainee.
In Giraldo’s case, he’d responded to to Loving’s call on March 5, 2019.
Loving and her friend had called police after a neighbor had called her and friend, Adrianna Greene, “hookers” and yelled racial epithets at them as they passed by on the sidewalk in front of his home. Then, they said, he pointed a shotgun at them.
When officers arrived, Loving and Greene were on the street corner, explaining what happened to a group of Miami-Dade police officers, body-camera footage showed.
“Look at the two young ladies. They’re standing there, calm, talking to officers, cooperating,” prosecutor Tim VanderGiesen told jurors during closing arguments on Thursday.
It wasn’t until Giraldo arrived that Loving raised her voice and implored him to arrest the gunman.
“You’re being disorderly rightly now,” Giraldo yelled. The back and forth went on, with Loving becoming more emotional, crying out that she “just had a gun pointed in my face.”
VanderGiesen told jurors Giraldo “got offended because they were telling him to do his job.”
Body-cam and cellphone footage showed that Giraldo pushed Loving into a fence, then corralled her to the ground while officers handcuffed her. Instead, Loving was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest without violence, charges that were later dropped.
“Police officers can put their hands on people to effectuate a lawful arrest. If the arrest is unlawful, they have no more rights than the rest of us. And he sure as heck can’t tackle her to the ground,” said VanderGiesen, who tried the case with Assistant State Attorney Valeska Alvarado.
The arrest report was filled with lies aimed at justifying the bad arrest, prosecutors said. Among them: that Loving was “causing a scene” and was being “uncooperative.”
But Giraldo’s defense lawyer, Rouviere, contended that the two women were the ones who “were riled up” and Loving was “out of control.”
“What you see there isn’t a crime. What you see there is a police officer working the streets, dealing with a situation and maybe his bedside manner was off,” Rouviere told jurors. “When he arrested Dyma Loving, it was after warning that she was being disruptive.”
