LaToya Ratlieff recently sued Fort Lauderdale and the police two years after a rubber bullet damaged her eye socket.
According to The Miami Herald, she filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the City of Fort Lauderdale, the Fort Lauderdale Police Department (FLPD(, Detective Eliezer Ramos, and several more officers on May 31. The suit accused the officers of battery and negligence in using impact weapons and violating Ratlieff’s First, Fourth, and 14th amendments rights.
Detective Ramos reportedly shot her in the face with a rubber bullet during a Black Lives Matter protest in May 2020, causing “serious and permanent eye damage, neurological injuries, and other directly attributable physical and emotional injuries,” Ratlieff’s 36-page court filing said. It also indicated that FLPD’s internal affairs investigators conducted a bogus investigation into the unjust use of force to intimidate her. She reportedly said that one of them told her Ramos was a “good guy during an interview.” Ramos was even cleared of “using excessive force” and “careless use of a firearm.”
“Ramos deployed munitions in a manner that created a substantial risk of causing death or serious bodily harm,” the victim’s lawsuit said. “[He] intentionally fired direct impact rounds into crowds of peaceful demonstrators knowing they had been tear-gassed and were frantically trying to escape the cloud of tear gas.”
As a result, the woman sustained severe injuries to her face and required 20 stitches to repair the damage to her eye.
“After two years of waiting, hoping, and asking, Fort Lauderdale has done little to ensure that what happened to me won’t happen to someone else,” she told the Herald. “I now see that the only way to force reform is to hold them accountable in a court of law.”
She is currently represented by personal injury lawyer Stuart Ratzan and civil rights lawyers Michael T. Davis and Ben Kuehne.
Ratlieff added that she felt she wouldn’t receive justice because justice for her was never to have been shot in the first place. However, she still wanted FLPD to take accountability for their actions.
“What I now seek is accountability in the hope that it will propel justice for others in future encounters with this police department,” she said.
