Former Miami Garden Officer Charged With Assault After Kneeling On a Woman’s Neck

A former Miami Gardens police officer has turned himself in and been charged with four counts of battery and two counts of misconduct for tasing a Black woman’s stomach as he pressed his knee firmly against her neck outside of a popular Miami-area strip club. Adding insult to injury, he lied about the incident in his police report.

On Thursday morning, 30-year-old Jordy Yanes Martel handed himself over to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Miami office for the assault, which took place outside of Tootsie’s Cabaret on 183rd Street in Miami on January 14th.

At a news conference, State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle showed two videos as evidence of Martel’s attack on the woman.

Fernandez Rundle said that Martel, who was a Miami Gardens police officer at the time, was working security off-duty when the manager of Tootsie’s asked him to give a verbal trespass warning to a woman who had allegedly thrown a tip at one of the waitresses.

Martel approached the woman who had already returned to her vehicle to leave the club, demanding that she get out of the car and walk towards his police vehicle. The woman refused and, instead, offered to drive over. That is when Marterl proceeded to force the woman from her car and down to the ground. He then pressed his knee against her neck.

According to FDLE’s investigation, “while (Martel) had no legal authority to detain the victim, he forcibly removed her from her vehicle.” The report also said that “while officers had control over both the victims’ arms, Martel tased the victim twice on the stomach.”

Fernandez Rundle stressed that footage of the incident contradicts Martel’s account of what took place in his arrest report. The two videos that were played were from two different points of view, one from the ex-officer’s body cam and one from a woman who had been in the car with the victim.

“The two videos you are about to see call into truthfulness a filed affidavit that was used to criminally charge (the victim),” Fernandez Rundle said. In the first piece of footage shown, which was the body cam footage, Martel is heard informing the woman of the violation and instructing her to his police vehicle so that they can “do the trespassing.”

“We’re gonna go to my car, we’re gonna do the trespassing, and then you’ll be free to go,” he is heard saying in the footage.

“I’ll drive there,” the victim offers. Martel refutes her offer and again instructs her to exit her car and walk to his vehicle. “I paid for everything, I don’t understand,” the woman can be heard saying as she repeatedly refuses to exit her car. Martel then says, “We’re not gonna do the back and forth- you’re either gonna out with me, and we do the trespass, or you’re gonna get arrested. That’s what’s gonna happen.” Again, he commands her to exit her car, to which she replies that she is going to begin filming. “Go ahead,” he instructs her, noting that his body camera has been turned on since the start of the conversation. At that point, Martel reaches his arm inside the car. “Are you crazy? You can’t reach in my car!” the woman can be heard yelling.

Martel then opens the woman’s car door and forces her to the ground. “You’re gonna be tased. You’re gonna get tased,” he repeated several times before loud screams can be heard.

The video also appears to show Martel’s knee pressed against the victim’s neck, as multiple other officers pin her down.

In the second video, which was filmed by the friend who was accompanying the victim, the woman can be heard yelling, “Why are y’all tasing her?” before a man turns to her and asks her to delete the video.

“I don’t know if you heard that at the end, the last gentleman there says ‘Can you delete that please,'” Rundle points out to ensure the audience of reporters had heard the man’s instructions. It is unclear if the man was an officer or a club employee.

In Martel’s arrest report, he blatantly lied by saying that the woman had become “aggressive and purposely malicious.” He also alleged that she had struck his hand before he was “able to help her out of the vehicle,” and that she then began “tensing and kicking, refusing to comply and purposely and maliciously striking me on the right part of my lower lip with a closed fist.” He also said that she continued to kick and punch officers until she was tasered and handcuffed.

However, Fernandez Rundle also pointed out that at the news conference that, “Videos show that he didn’t tell her she was under arrest, instead forcefully removing her from the car.”

“Martel said the defendant became aggressive, but the video refutes this. Martel was the aggressor when he went into the woman’s car without any evidence that she had committed a crime.”

Fernandez Rundle concluded, “By filing these charges today, we are stating that these actions are just plain wrong,” Fernandez Rundle said.

Martel has been booked into the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on a $6,000 bond. It remains unclear if he has a lawyer to represent him.

The woman suffered numerous cuts and bruises, as well as abrasions on her stomach from the taser. The charges that were filed against the victim the night of the incident have since been dropped.