CORAL GABLES, Fla. – A police officer is filing a lawsuit against the city of Coral Gables and two other officers after he said he was demoted and his professional reputation seriously damaged.
It was November of 2018 when Ben Guerrero said two off-duty officers working security at Hillstone Restaurant in Coral Gables yanked him from a bar stool and dragged him outside. He was arrested, charged with battery on a law enforcement officer and resisting arrest with violence. Guerrero said neither of those things happened.
“What happened to me was a crime,” Guerrero said. “They perp walked me through the restaurant in handcuffs.”
It is a humiliating experience for anyone, but perhaps even moreso for Guerrero, a law enforcement officer of almost 40 years. He was deputy chief of Florida International University’s police force, a lawyer and adjunct professor at the university.
Surveillance video from inside the restaurant showed what happened that night.
Guerrero said he was with a group having dinner at the bar and they asked to speak with the manager after a bartender said he would not serve any more alcoholic drinks to one of the women in the group.
“The bar had a policy that they didn’t serve people to the point of intoxication,” Guerrero said.
Watching the surveillance video, everything seems calm. Then an officer walks up to Guerrero and gestures for him to be quiet.
Guerrero said: “He puts his finger to his mouth and then the next thing I know he’s literally assaulting me and throwing me off of a bar stool.”
The police report said the bar manager asked officers to remove Guerrero. “No one ever told me to leave,” Guerrero recalled.
The manager gave a recorded statement to police who were looking into the incident. This is what he said he told the group.
" ‘We’re not going to serve you.’ But I did not give them any direction in terms of needing to close out, or needing to leave.”
Police also stated that Guerrero resisted arrest and struck one of the officers in the face with an elbow.
“I never struck anybody and that’s clear on the video,” he said, adding that “they lied on the arrest affidavit.”
Guerrero said he was transported him to the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center where, he said, they strip searched him, “put me in a red jumpsuit and put me in an isolation cell because of the fact that I’m a police officer,” he said.
The state attorney’s office declined to prosecute the case, but by then Florida International University had demoted Guerrero and cut his pay.
“His income was severely effected and this is something more importantly that he has to live with for the rest of his life,” said Hilton Napoleon, an attorney with Rasco Klock.
The city attorney for Coral Gables, Miriam Soler Ramos, told Local 10 in a statement:
“The city is aware of the incident and stands by the actions of the officers in this case. If a suit is filed, we will evaluate the allegations made and respond appropriately.”
Guerrero stands by his story. “This shouldn’t happen. It shouldn’t happen to me. It shouldn’t happen to anyone.”