officers were charged
with misdemeanor battery after beating two men
during an arrest of last month.
Video of the incident was just released.
And as one person described it,
"The officers looked like a pack of wild animals."
This occurred while they arrested a 24-year old,
who a few minutes earlier
had hit an officer with his scooter.
The officer sustained minor injuries,
but after catching and handcuffing the suspect,
his fellow officers piled on
with one officer repeatedly kicking him in the head.
A second person who was filming the police brutality
on their cell phone, was attacked and beaten as well.
I asked Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber about this incident
and here's what he told me.
The videos were looked at immediately.
And the command staff of our police department
realized that they were obviously very problematic.
They showed unacceptable and frankly shocking conduct.
And so immediately our Chief relieved the officers of duty.
I don't think this is what our department is.
I think we train better than this.
I think our officers perform better than this,
but obviously this episode
was something that is unacceptable
and I think what we did was right.
I guess the part that troubles me
is we're celebrating that this case
was immediately referred to the State Attorney's Office
and that the Police Chief took immediate action.
As if, seeing firsthand
and seeing clear evidence of a crime being committed
and being reported to the State Attorney's Office
is somehow extraordinary conduct
on the part of the Police Chief
and the police department,
as opposed to just the norm, that should be occurring.
Well, by the way, nobody is celebrating this.
I know some people have said
I've commended our department for doing it,
but I think it simply reflects
the fact that that's what our department should do.
And I think this was a very bad incident,
but I think that the department has responded
so far, correctly and there's more to do,
by the way, a lot more to do.
But I have a lot of faith
in our Police Chief and our department.
And my expectation is they will prove me right.
I also spoke to Ruban Roberts,
the former head of the NAACP in Miami-Dade County
and Lyle Muhammad, Executive Director
for the Circle of Brotherhood,
for their reaction into the video.
I was appalled.
I definitely was, I was angry,
I was appalled and my feeling was, yet again.
We had a year of protest against police brutality
last year in combination with the pandemic.
And we had several legislation acts
to address this issue
and a call for police reform.
And we still are dealing with this.
This is 2021
and we're still dealing with these issues today.
Well, the initial reaction, in seeing the video,
is being re-traumatized.
What a lot of individuals don't understand
about this whole brutality, racism.
This culture that is in policing,
and really every us as a society,
you relive those things if you've been through it.
So you feel just as,
it goes deeper than empathy for the victim.
There were 10,000
training glitches when you look at that video.
But the most important thing
is we think that these are isolated incidences,
but there is a culture in policing that must be eradicated.
Ruban, I want to come back to you.
You talk about a summer of protests
to try to bring about certain reforms.
Could you not see it as something positive?
The fact that
the Police Chief in Miami Beach
immediately relieved the officers of duty.
In other words, took their badge and their gun away
and reported it immediately to the State Attorney's Office
for review and that criminal charges
were filed within a week.
Is that not a positive step?
It is a glimmer of positivity
in terms of the Chief responding in the way that he did.
However, when the charges
that are being filed are misdemeanors,
that means that those officers can come back to their job.
Or even if they're relieved of duty
and they're fired,
they can go to another police department.
They'll still have their law license
and so that's the issue.
It should be a mandatory policy.
If you want to go a step further.
Make it a mandatory policy,
that any police officer that goes above and beyond duty
in an aggressive and a violent matter should be fired.
Terminated and there should be a recommendation made
to the Department of Law Enforcement
for their law license to be revoked.
You can't protect and serve a community that you abuse.
Lyle, I've heard the argument
that I just made a second ago,
which is that there is something positive to be said here
about the Police Chief having immediately reported this
to the State Attorney's Office.
The counter to that is that,
why are we giving so much credit to the police department
for doing what is essentially the right thing?
Lyle, pick up on that thought.
Well, number one,
we should give them credit for doing the right thing.
We should get anybody on this planet
who's doing the right thing.
We should give them credit.
Let's just be clear about that.
But in reality, the reason why it's being applauded,
is because it's out of the norm.
Going back to police culture,
in normal police and prosecutor culture,
things don't happen this quickly.
And so it is a help, and a step, as Ruban said,
in the right direction,
but we don't want to develop a slave master,
slave mentality.
That's right.
What do I mean by that?
There's a double standard here. Let's just be crystal clear.
I know that the Police Chief
did everything in his power and authority.
I know also the State's Attorney's Office
did everything that they thought they could actually win.
Being misunderstood,
if I, or many others,
would kick in the head,
an incapacitated, handcuffed police officer.
We wouldn't be suspended home with pay.
There will never be proper relationships
and respect and trust between citizens and police.
When there's a double standard
that you can not only abuse me,
but to kick me in my head
and I'd be charged with a misdemeanor,
something should be said about that.
Ruban, we're talking about the charges
against the five officers,
but if you look at that video,
there's another 15, 16, 17 officers that are present,
that are standing around.
I didn't see a lot of people,
a lot of those officers trying to intervene
and stop these beatings from occurring.
What do we make of that?
Well, when you are complicit, you give consent.
And what you see there is that those officers
who felt emboldened to act in that manner,
knew that they had support.
Brother Lyle just said the Circle of Brotherhood
works with law enforcement.
My company, RER Consulting,
we work with different municipalities in South Florida.
We do "Teen Talk" things to build the relationship
in the community between black folks
and law enforcement officers.
But it's a difficult task for us
when these incidents keep happening.
So, just last week
we had 25 high school teenagers
from Liberty City, Overtown, in a training session
with 17 of Miami Cities, command staff officers
and what we had to go through,
just to get our young people to feel confident
and comfortable in that environment
is something that only skilled persons
at dealing with trauma can do.
Our young people are traumatized, man.
Ruban you raised this issue
and I thought it was really interesting.
So expand on it a little bit.
The notion of how this undermines
the effort to build trust with young people
in the African-American community.
So one of the first questions I asked
during my "Teen Talk" dialogue sessions
between the officers and the youth
and I do them all over Bay County,
is how many of you trust police?
At the beginning of the session, no one raises their hand.
By the end of the session,
you have a couple that will raise their hand
and say, "I trust the officer that I spoke with."
Most of these officers don't have any interaction
with these young, black and brown kids,
unless it's precipitated by some sort of call.
So they don't go in and you know,
that officer friendly thing is not happening
like it used to, that would've...
So they don't go in.
These kids, a lot of times,
their first encounter with law enforcement
is seeing a relative being arrested
or brutalized or that sort of thing.
So there's a mistrust of that system.
And the only way
that you're gonna get trust in the system
is that if you treat these kids like humans.
If you see the humanity, treat people like human.
I trained Miami Beach police a couple of years back
and there were some officers on staff.
And I asked the question,
"What's your job?
"What's your responsibility?"
I said, "Is it to protect and serve?"
You know what they said?
Some of them. Not all of them.
"We're here to get the bad guys."
I've said this to you before,
everything looks like a nail to a hammer.
So if we are perceived to be the bad guys,
simply because of the color of our skin,
then we are automatically guilty.
You follow me?
And that's one of the things that the youth,
who I'm working to build,
that's the way that they see,
that the police will always see them as guilty.
Ruban do you have any concerns
about the way the five officers who were arrested,
how they were handled?
They were given notice to appear.
They were not taken to jail.
There were no mugshots. They were never placed in handcuffs.
They were simply given essentially tickets
and told to appear in court at a later date.
What it does is just really, it validates
this two tier system, if you will.
We know that they get professional courtesies, if you will.
They're not treated the same.
They're protected by laws, the police bill of rights.
And so, yes, again, what it does,
it does, like brother Lyle is saying, it dehumanizes you.
It makes you feel that you're separate and apart.
That you're different
and that your value or your worth is not the same.
And then my last point on it is this,
what are you needed to see?
Not with these offices being sneaked behind
in a dark hour in time.
Booked behind closed doors.
They needed to see these offices with mugshots.
They needed to see these officers in handcuffs,
being treated properly as a so-called human being,
that completely dehumanized other human beings,
that look just like me.
That makes you feel like some sense of worth or justice.