Miami-Dade Police Accused of Excessive Force

Now this makes me mad.

A 22-year old man with Down's syndrome was beaten by two Miami-Dade police who confronted the man because they observed a "bulge" in his waist band.

The young man was stopped in his Richmond Heights neighborhood by two Miami-Dade officers for something he was wearing.

According to the police incident report, the patrol officers wanted to talk to him about the "bulge." As it turned out, the bulge was the young man's colostomy bag.

The man was detained at around 9 p.m. Then right in front of his house; he ended up in handcuffs; stripped down to his underwear; and down on the ground in the middle of the street where his family says he was body slammed by police.

The two officers wrote in their incident report that "while attempting to pat him down" the young man tried to run away four times.

After police gave "multiple commands to stop moving in attempt to handcuff him", he "fell on the ground and struck his forehead."

Still ignoring their loud verbal commands "to stop resisting and obey", they say the 5 foot 3 inch tall, 130 pound man struck one of the officers in the chest. That officer then "slapped" the young man and subdued him.

Fortunately, the man was not arrested for resisting an officer without violence. But this does go to show that police officers can, and sometimes do, grossly abuse their power. This incident is shameful and only hurts the reputation of all police officers, who are generally good people.

But cops are an integral part of a case, and incidents like these do show that cops can lie and abuse their authority. Their words should always be taken with a grain of salt.