UPDATE: Cape Coral Police Refuse to Release Name of Officer Who Threw Woman to the Ground
A video posted to Facebook early Sunday morning by Daniel Wirka shows an unknown Cape Coral PoliceOfficer slamming a woman to the ground (see video above).
At the start of the video it appears that the man has taken Brittnie Fails, 23, keys and she wants them back. Thirty seconds into the video an unknown officer, possibly Captain Michael Torregrossa, walks up to Brittnie grabs her, yanks her, then tosses her on the ground.
After the officer tosses her he continues to walk up to the male with his back facing Brittnie. Ten seconds later you can hear the officer state, “get her up, she is faking.” He later states, “she’s not out, she’s playing games.” At this moment a crowd starts to form.
You can hear someone say, “I don’t care if you have a badge on, you don’t throw women like that. That is f*cked up.”
“If there’s anything that makes me mad about the entire video it’s not even being thrown on the ground, it’s how he just nonchalantly like ‘oh my God, get over it, you’re faking it,’” Fails said Sunday.
We attempted to reach out to Cape Coral Police Department numerous times by their social media page as well as email. We received the same message each time.
We were alerted that the officer in the video could be Captain Michael Torregrossa. We are waiting on the department to respond back.
On March 14th, 5PM, Cape Coral Police released a statement on their social media page. The video below comes from their YouTube.
Cape Coral Mayor Marni Sawicki weighed in Monday, saying it’s far too soon to pass judgment on the officer’s actions.
“We have a great police force, they’ll do the right thing and do a great investigation,” she said. “I know that we have zero tolerance on our force. We have an excellent force and we will be as transparent as possible.”
The internal affairs review could take up to 180 days. The officer has been placed on paid leave.
If you think they mishandled the situation leave them a comment on their page or even call them! (239) 574-3223
EDITORS NOTE: It’s all too common that investigations are pitched at honorable processes when the offenders are cops. Yet, does it take 180 days to catch the person(s) who robbed the local gas station on video? No, so why does it take 180 days to bring charges against a cop who assaulted a woman who didn’t see the cop coming? The officer also never said, “Freeze, hold it or stop.” He said nothing before tossing a drunk woman to the ground.
Make no mistake, if you’re out in Cape Coral having a few drinks and you ‘accidentally’ spin a woman around to the point where she’s hurt, you’ll end up in the back of a Cape Coral police cruiser as one of their 35,000 arrest without excessive force. You’ll most likely stay in jail too, until you see a judge and bond out.
This isn’t the case for police. The video shows that the officer, at a bare minimum, made a mistake when he snuck up on the woman and tossed her to the ground. Even if he DIDN’T mean to hurt her he did and even if her injuries were serious, he still needs to be treated like the rest of us. If the system is to be respected and taken seriously, it needed to arrest this officer immediately, put him in front of a judge and let the system play out as it does for millions of others.
When police departments act this way all they are doing is chipping away the already eroding trust the people have in the gang in blue. Which is fine by me, there’s no correcting this flawed system, so keep chipping away piggies. I look forward to the alternatives that arise from your fall.
