Officer Alejandro Giraldo, the Miami-Dade cop filmed violently taking down and arresting a black woman who called the police for help, was arrested and charged with first-degree misdemeanor battery and felony official misconduct Friday afternoon, nearly two months after video of the arrest first went viral.
Giraldo was one of two officers who arrested Dyma Loving after a confrontation with her neighbor on March 5. Loving and her friend, Adrianna Greene, say neighbor Frank Tumm pulled a shotgun on them and threatened to shoot Loving’s “burnt black face” off her body.
Officers responded to Loving and Greene’s call for help, but things escalated once Giraldo arrived on the scene, as cell phone video and police body cam footage shows.
Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle announced the charges today.
“After taking the sworn statements of Ms. Dyma Loving, Ms. Adrianna Green, all the other available witnesses, and reviewing all the known video evidence, we believe that there is sufficient evidence to charge a violation of Florida’s criminal statutes,” Rundle’s office announced in a media release shared with the Miami New Times.
Loving filed a civil rights complaint last month against Miami-Dade County, the Miami-Dade County Police Department, and the two arresting officers, Alejandro Giraldo and J.F. Calderon, for the incident, which left her traumatized.
“My trust is completely broken,” Loving told The Root in March. “I will never call the police again. No. No. I will figure it out.”
In addition to seeking damages, the suit called for Giraldo and Calderon to be fired. Loving’s attorney, Justin Moore applauded the decision to arrest and charge Giraldo today but said more needed to be done.
“It is well known that police officers rarely face criminal liability for criminal behavior in this country. And although Dyma has expressed relief that Officer Giraldo has been charged for his abhorrent behavior on March 5, 2019, she does believes that the battery she experienced that day should have amounted to a felony and that other officers present, including but not limited to Officer J.F. Calderon, should be facing similar charges,” Moore wrote in a press release shared with The Root.
“The phrase, if you choose to agree with it, that ‘not all police officers are bad, but one bad apple can spoil the bunch’ is immediately relevant to this case,” Moore added. “For this statement to have teeth it is important to analyze each officer’s report that day under the same lens that Officer Giraldo’s police report received and, thusly, a determination should be made if any other member of the Miami-Dade Police Department committed a crime.”