Video Shows Miami Beach Police Striking, Tasing Olympic Sprinter Fred Kerley

Team USA sprinter Fred Kerley was arrested in Miami Beach on Thursday night, in a scene partially captured by body camera footage. Kerley was struck with “multiple hammer fists” and tased before being taken into custody, the police report and footage show.

Kerley approached the area of an active police investigation because he was concerned about his car being parked nearby, police say. The report claims Kerley approached the officers with “an aggressive demeanor” and went into a “fighting stance.”

Kerley was charged with three offenses and jailed Thursday. Miami-Dade judge Mindy Glazer found officers did not have probable cause for disorderly conduct, but did for the other two: battery of a law enforcement officer (a felony) and resisting an officer without violence (a misdemeanor).

Though Kerley was technically released on his own recognizance for the incident with police, he remained in a Miami jail after the hearing. Police added charges from a nearly year-old case on Friday, claiming they were not able to locate him in May 2024. (Kerley competed at the U.S. Olympic Trials the next month, and the Olympics later that summer.)

The new charges against Kerley were serious felonies: strongarm robbery, domestic violence, and domestic violence by strangulation. 

During Friday’s hearing for the incident with police the night before, Glazer, the local judge, admonished Miami Beach police. 

“Sergeant, this could have been handled a different way,” Glazer said, according to Local 10 News. “And I don’t know if the officers in Miami Beach are busy handling a lot of complicated crime scenes there, but I have a gentleman who’s never been arrested, there’s no prior arrests, who his attorney’s saying has competed in the Olympics, who is obviously a professional athlete and it’s unfortunate that he got to this position.”

Kerley was being represented in court by local attorney Yale Sanford. Kerley’s agent did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

“ The video footage, it’s obscene,” Sanford tells FOS. “It just goes to show that no matter how hard you work, how many medals you earn for your country, how many millions of people you inspire, last night in Miami Beach, my client was treated like millions of African Americans around this country—with a lack of humanity, compassion, or respect.”

Sanford also tells FOS that Glazer’s reaction in bond court was noteworthy. “For a judge to come out this early, and I don’t want to speak for her, but it does shine a light on the seriousness of police misconduct and the use of force.”

Bodycam footage shows the incident quickly escalating. When the footage—released to FOS and other outlets under Florida law—begins, Kerley approaches an officer, who pushes him away with one hand. Kerley pushes the hand away, and the officer shoves him back. Kerley aggressively approaches the officers before the footage blacks out; then Kerley is seen on the ground, where several officers are striking him repeatedly.

Kerley’s girlfriend, Cleo Rahman, can be heard in the background telling police to stop. “He’s an athlete; please do not mess with him,” she said. “He’s a Team USA athlete; he’s Team USA.”

Footage from several angles—the officers’ body cameras plus observers recording for social media—show the officers beating and tasing Kerley while Rahman continuously pleads for the officers to stop. (The police report says she was telling her boyfriend to stop, not officers.) The police report says one officer, Alexander Pichs-Picado, “delivered multiple hammer fists toward the defendant’s upper head area and several elbows toward his upper back area,” before he later “delivered multiple diversionary strikes toward his rib cage area which were unsuccessful.” That same officer is the one who used the taser gun.

After being tased and placed in handcuffs, while still on the ground, Kerley insisted he was not resisting, repeatedly called officers “weak,” and told them they would go to jail.

Rahman was also arrested, facing one charge of resisting without violence. (A brand-new Florida law that went into effect Jan. 1 makes it illegal to come within 25 feet of first responders.)

The arrest affidavit in the domestic violence case says Kerley choked a woman with whom he had three children amid a “verbal dispute.” According to the report, Kerley and the woman were arguing about her contacting someone on Instagram when she hit him in the face, and he responded by shoving her to the ground and choking her.

The report says Miami-Dade police realized Kerley was being held in Miami Beach jail Friday, and subsequently filed their charges.

Another lawyer for Kerley told CBS News Miami that the domestic violence charges were “stemming from a falsified accusation that has resurfaced because of this new media attention from last night’s wrongful arrest.”

The lawyer, Richard L. Cooper, called Miami Beach a “brutal police state.” 

Most of the officers involved in Thursday’s incident were not veterans in the Miami Beach police department. Two of the four officers listed in the police report, Luis Lumpuy and Pichs-Picado—who struck and tased Kerley—were sworn in in December 2021. Brandon Vicens was sworn in in July 2023. None of the four officers appeared in Florida’s database of disciplined law enforcement officers that dates back to 2012.

At the last two Olympics, the 29-year-old Kerley earned a bronze medal in the 100 meters in Paris and a silver medal in the same event in Tokyo. In 2022, he won gold in the 100 meters at the World Championships with a time of 9.86 seconds, one of the fastest ever recorded. He also medaled four times at the World Championships in 2017, 2019, and 2023, which included two 4X400-meter golds.