In true backwards police fashion, the victim of an assault by two Orlando police officers as he was on the ground following their orders was formally charged on Friday with battery on a law-enforcement officer, resisting an officer with and without violence and misdemeanor battery.
The witness footage, which we reported on in June, shows Noel Carter, 30, sitting on a curb as he is repeatedly kicked, at least six times, by an officer before a second officer tases him. We see the Florida man being barked at to get on his stomach, which he does. He does not appear combative at any time during what we can see of the assault.
“You see two officers, not one. I don’t see how the person would be a threat. I don’t see that person’s arms in the air. I don’t see that person putting up any signs of violence,” legal analyst Alisia Adamson told WESH. “Not only am I not seeing any signs of resistance from the person on the ground, I see him complying with the orders from the officers.”
By the time Carter was loaded into a police car he had been struck with a metal baton, shocked with the stun gun and hit with pepper spray.
“We were hopeful that the charges would be dropped,” Natalie Jackson, Carter’s attorney told the Orlando Sentinel. “Every case of police brutality in Central Florida, even the ones caught on film, the victim has been charged with a crime. What kind of justice is that?”
The video, which rapidly went viral, lead to concerned citizens calling for the officers as well as Chief John Mina to resign or be terminated.
Mina maintains that the incident is still under investigation by the Orlando Police Department and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and has called for the public to be patient as they investigate themselves – and surely come up with a way to determine that there was no wrongdoing.
Orlando police Officers Charles Mays and David Cruz, the attackers, have not been charged relating to the June 4 incident.
The Orlando Police Department can be reached at 407-246-2470.
