Charges dropped against FIU protesters and arrest reports don’t match 911 call

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The charges against four Florida International University students who were protesting the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis Police — and the inequitable treatment of blacks by law enforcement and criminal courts everywhere — have been dropped by state prosecutors who did not find enough evidence to move forward.

“The totality of all the evidence was insufficient to prove guilt for the charged offenses. Under such circumstances, dropping the charges was the right thing to do,” SAO spokesman Ed Griffith told Ladra.

Insufficient evidence? Don’t you mean fabricated evidence, Ed?

Because the arrest reports were full of lies and didn’t match the recording of the 911 call made hours earlier and connected, irresponsibly and wrongfully, to the innocent young people arrested, includingg my niece, Isabel de la Huerta, an environmentally conscious 23-year-old who was dropping off donations for the homeless when she was moved by the Black Lives Matter protest and joined it.

Read related: State Attorney should investigate illegal arrest of 4 peaceful FIU protesters

WLRN reporter Daniel Rivero made a public records request for the 911 tape, the call that reportedly led to the arrests, and first exposed the discrepencies (read: lies) in the arresting officers’ reports earlier the week.

The only 911 call provided came from a man to report a single protester “jumping in front of the cars,” near the entrance to FIU on 107th Avenue and 16th Street. It was not a frightened woman in a white car reporting a mob of young protesters vandalizing her vehicle and assaulting her, as stated in the arrest reports and reported on Telemundo. In fact, the 911 operator is so unconcerned by the call, that she cuts the caller off after 25 seconds. She just hangs up on him.

So why is there another story from the cops?

Arresting officers wrote in the reports that a 911 call was received about 6:23 p.m. June 6 “reference a female in distress inside a white vehicle being surrounded and assaulted by a large crowd.” Officer B. Ashe even supposedly witnessed “the white vehicle being surrounded and driver being assaulted by a large crowd.”

Did police simply invent the tale about the woman in the white car so they could finally arrest somebody? They had been there all day, jacked up, expecting violence or looting, and found nothing but college students marching and protesting peacefully. They wanted something to show for the day’s work. So it seems they justified the arrests with false information.

Read related: Miami-Dade moves forward with police reform post Floyd protests

Because more than an hour after that alleged 911 call, “it was determined that the same group of protesters were gathering and forming an unlawful assembly as well as obstructing traffic at SW 8th Street and 107th Avenue.”

Ladra’s niece was sitting on the sidewalk with her hands up when she was handcuffed and taken into custody seven minutes after the police told protesters to disperse from the “illegal assembly.” She was taken to headquarters first, before being booked at the TGK correctional center, and drilled by anti-terrorist task force members about “who organized this” and “how did you hear about it.” They were totally barking up the wrong tree.

Another student arrested, a 19-year-old black male who lives on campus, was charged with resisting arrest after he tried not to get arrested. My niece said he was slammed against the guardrail next to the Tamiami Canal. Ladra, too, would be in fear for her life if she was a black teenage boy being arrested. His charges were dropped also.

That is, at a much smaller scale, the very abuse the demonstrators were protesting about.

So it is not enough to see the charges dropped against these students, who were just exercising their constitutional right to express themselves.

“I’m glad the state attorney’s office has decided to drop the charges because we did nothing wrong,” Isabel told Tia Ladra. “My great grandparents left Cuba precisely so we could have the right to assemble and protest our government and speak freely. We were demonstrating peacefully.

“This episode is a good example of how easily police can escalate situations needlessly and abuse their power. But it is nothing compared to what black Americans have to suffer every day at the hands of those sworn to serve and protect them. That’s what this is all about.

“And that’s why it’s important to keep protesting this abusive culture in law enforcement until everyone is treated equally.”

That’s also why Miami-Dade State Attorney Kathy Fernandez-Rundle needs to investigate how these illegal arrests happened. Especially in light of the recording of the 911 call that totally contradicts the call as described in the arrest reports.

It sounds criminal.

And it’s her job to investigate criminal activity — even if it’s among fellow law enforcement. And if she’s not going to do her job, we can find someone else — and this kind of blind eye to police abuse is only going to help Melba Pearson win.

  George Floyd, Kathy Fernandez-Rundle, Melba Pearson, police abuse, police brutality