A video released Thursday by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office shows a woman in handcuffs getting hit repeatedly by an officer as other officers watch the violence unfold.
The Sheriff’s Office announced the arrest of the 26-year-old probationary patrol officer after the incident.
The video starts with the woman walking toward the officer in the processing area of the Duval County jail before he grabs her by both arms and pins her against a wall.
The handcuffed woman then attempts to kick the officer twice. The officer takes three full swings with his right arm, landing the first strike in the woman’s stomach. The video shows the woman trying to turn her head as the next two blows land higher on her body.
The video, which doesn’t have audio, then shows one of the other men in uniform walk over to the two while the officer is restraining the handcuffed woman as she is slumped over a trash can.
The woman collapses to the floor as the officers walk away with little to no reaction seen.
Undersheriff Pat Ivey said Akinyemi Borisade, hired in March 2015, was terminated from the Sheriff’s Office after he was arrested on a battery charge.
“There are ways that this could have been dealt with without striking her,” Ivey said of the events shown in the jail’s surveillance footage.
The woman, 31-year-old Mayra Alejandra Martinez, was initially arrested after a dispute Wednesday at Scores Gentleman’s Club at 4923 University Blvd. W.
She recently moved from Orlando and Wednesday was her first day working at the establishment, according to her arrest report.
A man who answered the phone Thursday at Scores declined to comment and said management would not be talking about the situation.
Officers responded to the bar about 4:50 p.m. after a reported dispute between an employee and management, Ivey said. She was asked to leave and was later arrested on charges of trespassing and resisting officers with violence.
According to the arrest report, the acting manager said Martinez had four shots of 100-proof liquor before deciding to quit. He said she refused to leave the parking lot and was disturbing patrons.
Martinez told arriving officers she had suddenly been told to leave and still had personal belongings inside, including her purse, the report said. When the officers, including Borisade, told her she was being trespassed from the property, she became irate and belligerent.
She appeared intoxicated and refused another warning to leave. When she was told she was being arrested, she began pulling away and swinging her arms, according to the report. Borisade and the other officer took her to the ground, and she began kicking and biting.
Borisade struck her in the lower back until she stopped resisting, the report said. She continued to kick on the way to the patrol car and inside at the windows and doors.
A dashcam video provided to the Times-Union by a witness shows the two officers on top of her and Borisade hammering away on her and smashing her face into the ground.
Ivey said the woman was then transported to the jail where the incident caught on camera took place.
The other men in uniform are shown in the video standing and talking as the woman sits on the ground unattended before slumping over as her head hits the floor.
Police said the woman was not hospitalized and the officers who stood and watched would not be disciplined.
“Witnessing a crime does not constitute a crime,” said Christian Hancock, spokesman for the Sheriff’s Office. “They would have been questioned about the incident as any other witness to a crime would be. The reporting of this incident was almost instantaneous.”
Ivey explained the correct way to handle the situation could have been to turn her around and hold her “in a transporting position that they are trained in … but there was no need to strike her.”
Joe Daraskevich: (904) 359-4308