A Florida police officer was fired and arrested after a video shows him beating a handcuffed woman.
The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office in Florida confirmed that it fired patrol officer Akinyemi Borisade, 26, who had been with the office for a year.
He was captured on camera repeatedly beating a woman in jail last Wednesday.
“When we see an officer do something like this, we have to respond quickly,” Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams told reporters Friday, reported the Washington Post. “We are accountable to the community for how these officers act. They are accountable for their actions.”
The woman, 31-year-old Mayra Martinez, is seen walking towards a group of officers with her hands cuffed behind her back.
One of the officers grabs her and shoves her against the wall. He then steps away and she kicks at him twice. He then jumped at her and punches her several times.
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Corrections officers notified their supervisors about the alleged assault. Undersheriff Pat Ivey said that Borisade could have handled the situation differently.
“He could have turned her around and held her in a transporting position that they are trained in, back over to the location to wait by the door. He could have stood there with her. But there was no need to strike her,” Ivey said.
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Martinez was arrested at a dispute in a strip club where she started working on Wednesday, the Florida Times-Union reported. A manager said she got drunk, quit, and then started harassing customers in the parking lot and refused to leave.
The paper stated:
When she was told she was being arrested, she began pulling away and swinging her arms, according to the report. Borisade and the other officer took her to the ground, and she began kicking and biting.
Borisade struck her in the lower back until she stopped resisting, the report said. She continued to kick on the way to the patrol car and inside at the windows and doors.
A dashcam video provided to the Times-Union by a witness shows the two officers on top of her and Borisade hammering away on her and smashing her face into the ground.
The woman was not hospitalized. The officers who stood by and watched will not be disclipined, the report said.
“Witnessing a crime does not constitute a crime,” said Christian Hancock, a spokesman for the Sheriff’s Office. “They would have been questioned about the incident as any other witness to a crime would be. The reporting of this incident was almost instantaneous.”
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