Miami-Dade County police shooting case profiled by the Daily Business Review

Posted by Justin C. Leto

Back in February, I wrote a blog discussing the case of Antonio Andrew’s death at the hands of the Miami-Dade County Special Response Team and Street Terror Offender Program.  You can read that blog posting here.

In today’s Daily Business Review, journalist John Pacenti wrote an article detailing the same case as well as a recently filed case on behalf of another man killed in the same raid, Jorge Lemus.  The Daily Business Review article can be read by clicking here.  The Lemus case, like the Andrew case, was filed by The Leto Law Firm and Dean-Kluger Sibley Law

The case involves the shooting deaths of 4 men during a raid set up and instituted by the Miami-Dade County Police Department.  Prior to the raid, the police were able to infiltrate a group of men that were robbing drug dealers in Miami-Dade County.  The police “turned” one of the men into an informant and utilized that informant to set up a raid that should have been designed to apprehend and arrest the men.  The police told the informant to send the men to a house in South Miami’s Redlands area and to inform the group that there were drugs and potentially armed drug dealers at the house.  Expecting a confrontation, the men went armed to the house.  When they arrived, the police rushed the area in unmarked cars and proceeded to jump out of the unmarked cars in pursuit of the men.  The police were not dressed in police uniforms and did not announce themselves as police.  Instead, the officers proceeded to shoot and kill all 4 men, including the informant.  We have filed suit on behalf of two families of the men, claiming that their constitutional rights were violated by a “shoot first and ask questions later” approach to the raid.

The Leto Law Firm is a civil trial law firm that specializes in Miami catastrophic injuries, Florida traumatic brain injury, Miami wrongful death cases, and civil rights violations.