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Miami Police Officer Luis Weinad was annoyed: The young cop he was in charge of training had just arrested a man for walking around with crack cocaine and a pipe and sent him off to jail. But instead of filling out an electronic arrest form — as per department policy — the inexperienced cop had handwritten everything. Now Weinad’s bosses were refusing to accept it.
That’s when Weinad lost it. Instead of fixing the problem, investigators say, Weinad yelled, “Fuck, I knew I shouldn’t have arrested this guy!” Then he drove to jail, pulled the suspect out, destroyed his crack pipe and drugs, and dumped the man back where he’d found him on the street.
Weinad has now been suspended 160 hours over the move.
The trouble began when Weinad, who was hired in 2003, was assigned as a training officer to a new cop, according to Civilian Investigative Panel files on the case.
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While on patrol, the younger cop spotted a man named Gambarull Ruff with a crack pipe and drugs and placed him under arrest. Ruff is no stranger to charges; court records show he’s been arrested dozens of times for everything from trespassing to drug charges.
But when Weinad went to his sergeants to review the training cop’s work, he learned that the officer hadn’t filled out the electronic paperwork as required. He begged his sergeants to sign off on the paperwork anyway, but they refused.
Ruff, meanwhile, had already been taken to the Turner Guilford Knight jail to await charges. Instead, Weinad himself showed up at the jail and took Ruff out from behind bars. Then he drove him back to where he was arrested, dumped him on the street, and destroyed the evidence of his drug possession.
When prosecutors later tried to sort out what had happened, Weinad first claimed the case was still being investigated and then claimed it was actually a misdemeanor charge (even though there’s no such thing as a misdemeanor for cocaine possession).
Internal affairs investigators later substantiated a misconduct charge against Weinad and suspended him 160 hours.
What about the cop Weinad was training? The next day, investigators say, he told the younger officer “he did not want him to learn from the events of the previous night, and the correct thing would have been to complete an electronic arrest affidavit.”
