Jury to decide if Fort Lauderdale liable for injuries of protester shot in face with rubber bullet

A jury will decide whether the City of Fort Lauderdale is liable for the injuries LaToya Ratlieff received during a Black Lives Matter protest in 2020, where she was shot in the face with a rubber bullet by a Fort Lauderdale Police officer.

Ratlieff filed a federal lawsuit against several individual Fort Lauderdale Police officers and the city in May 2022, exactly two years after she was among the crowd of thousands of protesters in downtown Fort Lauderdale in the wake of George Floyd’s police murder. Fort Lauderdale officers fired tear gas into the crowd, and body-worn camera video showed some officers shooting rubber bullets and shouting “get that m———–” and “pop his a–,” the South Florida Sun Sentinel previously reported.

Judge Rodolfo A. Ruiz II in a 107-page decision Wednesday said that while the individual officers named in the suit cannot be held liable, there are questions a jury must decide about whether the city is liable for allegedly failing to adequately train officers in crowd control and in using less-than-lethal weapons.

Officers at the protest were equipped with canisters of tear gas, devices that create loud bangs and flash, called noise flash diversionary devices, and Kinetic Impact Projectiles, often known as rubber and foam bullets, according to Ruiz’s order.

Ruiz wrote that the record shows “serious deficiencies” in officers’ training on the use of less-lethal weapons in real-world and crowd-control scenarios and noted “particularly relevant” discrepancies about where on someone’s body officers were trained to aim rubber bullets.

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“Today’s federal court ruling marks a significant victory in LaToya Ratlieff’s pursuit for justice for her and the many others who suffered egregious abuse at the hands of the poorly trained Fort Lauderdale Police,” Ratlieff’s attorneys Michael T. Davis, Stuart Ratzan and Benedict P. Kuehne said in a statement. “This decision paves the way for LaToya to show the public in an open trial in Fort Lauderdale federal court that the City of Fort Lauderdale and its Police Department will be held accountable.”

Spokespersons for the police department and the attorneys representing the officers and the city did not respond to an email seeking comment Wednesday after business hours.

On May 31, 2020, Ratlieff was a peaceful member of the protest, according to the judge’s order. Video evidence in the lawsuit shows “at least some” people were throwing things at officers at the time Ratlieff was among the crowd in the intersection of Southeast Second Street and First Avenue.

Officer Eliezer Ramos, a SWAT member, fired a rubber bullet that hit Ratlieff in the face. Ratlieff argues in the lawsuit that her constitutional rights were violated, and the city and officers argue her injuries were an unintended consequence of officers’ efforts to stop the violence, the judge wrote.

“Pop his ass.” Bodycam videos show protesters throwing things at police. Some officers seem to revel in the return fire.

Ramos said he was attempting to stop a man who was standing behind Ratlieff, throwing tear gas canisters back at the officers but hit Ratlieff by mistake, the Sun Sentinel previously reported. An Internal Affairs investigation cleared Ramos of any wrongdoing in 2021. Then-Chief Rick Maglione was removed from his job shortly after the protest.

Ratlieff was concussed and her eye socket fractured, and her attorneys said at a news conference in 2022 that she still had side effects of headaches, dizziness, nausea and partial blindness.

Ramos was wearing a gas mask when he fired the rubber bullet, and Ratlieff argues that the police department failed to train officers in using less-lethal weapons specifically while wearing gas masks — “a task which all agree Ramos had not performed since SWAT school in 2016 and that FLPD had not trained him to perform at any time,” Ruiz wrote.

“Given that FLPD is ostensibly requiring SWAT to train frequently in other skillsets, FLPD appears to have necessarily made the decision not to train SWAT members on how to handle crowds using less-lethals,” Ruiz later wrote. “FLPD also proffers sparse historical evidence of department-wide training on the use of less-lethals in crowd control situations.”

Ruiz wrote the “conspicuous lack of professionalism among FLPD officers deploying less-lethals” seen on body-worn camera video and video recorded by bystanders at the protest also showed they were not properly trained on using those weapons to handle crowds.

“Here, viewing the facts in the light most favorable to Ratlieff, the Court concludes that she
has presented more than enough evidence to support the inference that FLPD’s training
deficiencies caused her alleged First Amendment violations,” Ruiz wrote.

The individual officers, including Ramos, cannot be held liable because of qualified immunity, Ruiz wrote, which protects government employees from being sued as individuals for actions they did in their official job duties.

“Qualified immunity continues to be a vexing and unjust barrier for citizens harmed by police misconduct,” Ratlieff’s attorneys said in their statement. “Today’s ruling confirms that despite these challenges, justice will prevail for LaToya Ratlieff.”

A status conference is scheduled for Sept. 13.