Why Is This Cop Bullying a Homeless Man?

by Jill Bond

Not only has Florida effectively made the homeless criminals, but apparently some police officers think they are entitled to slap the hell out of them.

A Fort Lauderdale police officer has been suspended with pay after a video materialized on YouTube showing the officer shoving the homeless man to the ground and then slapping him. Hard.

Officer Victor Ramirez can be seen on the cellphone footage which was posted on Sunday, escorting a man, who the Miami Herald has identified as Bruce Laclair, out of a Broward bus terminal.

When Ramirez knocked Laclair to the ground, Laclair responded with a “fuck you.” Ramirez proceeded to scold Leclair and told him to get up. Laclair tried to talk to the officer but Ramirez decided to let his latex-gloved hand do the talking and rather viciously slapped Laclair across the face, causing the man taking the video to let out a loud, “Whoa!”

“I’m not fucking around with you,” Ramirez said. Obviously not. Ramirez put Laclair in handcuffs and led him off jail, charged with trespassing. Laclair was later released on bail hours later, according to the The Miami Herald.

Ft. Lauderdale has passed laws making it illegal for homeless people to sleep on public grounds or to display their possessions. Don’t get it wrong now, it’s still okay to show off those hideous brown Louis Vuitton bags, just don’t get caught carrying everything you own in a brown bag.

And Miami is looking to pass a law that would outlaw the use of pillows and blankets on sidewalks. So slapping isn’t the only cruel and unusual punishment being doled out to the homeless.

And Florida isn’t alone in helping to make the lives of people on the streets more hellish, either. Last year there was an incident in Albuquerque where two officers shot and killed a homeless man after he’d surrendered, and in 2012 officers in Fullerton, California so severely beat a schizophrenic homeless man that he was put on life support for five days before being removed from it and allowed to die.

These violent actions cannot be tolerated, nor should we continue to ignore the plight of the homeless. It would cost us less to provide the chronically homeless with permanent housing and case managers to watch over them than it does on maintaining them on the streets.

Officer Ramirez has clearly shown that he doesn’t have the temperament that is needed when dealing with public. Possibly some time spent volunteering at a homeless shelter (supervised of course) will cause him to respond more with his heart and less with his hands.