A Miami man whose beating at the hands of police was captured on cell phone video has been charged with resisting arrest without violence, a charge his lawyer says came from nothing more than the man's attempts to cover his head from the blows.
Gilberto Matamoros, a 21-year-old youth center worker, says he was doing nothing wrong when police arrested him during a brawl in Miami's Coconut Grove neighborhood on Halloween. According to his lawyer, Ricardo Martinez-Cid, Matamoros was picked out of an unruly crowd and beaten unconscious by two Miami police officers. He had to be taken to a nearby hospital.
Cell phone footage of the incident shows a police officer hitting Matamoros five times on or near his head. Miami police launched an investigation into the two officers' actions after the video appeared on local news stations last week.