Miami Gardens Police Sergeant Javier Romaguera was transporting a mentally ill woman to a home she had lived in last July when he checked her into a hotel and tried to have sex with her.
Romaguera fondled her breasts and tried to kiss her, but the 23-year-old woman declined his advances, so he left the room.
However, he filed a report saying he had dropped her off at a home where she had previously lived, which turned out to be a lie
Meanwhile, a friend of the woman, Jensen Mondesir, who had been trying to track her down, even notifying the Miami Gardens Police Department who told him they dropped her off at her prior residence, eventually received a call from her.
After the woman told Mondesir what had happened, he filed an internal affairs complaint against Romaguera.
They hired an attorney, who obtained a receipt from the Stadium Hotel, which confirmed that Romaguera booked a room that night under his name, listing the address of the police department as his address.
However, it was not until Local 10 investigative reporter Bob Norman began asking questions that the department suspended him. And even that took four months.
The incident began on July 11, 2016 when Romaguera was responding to a call of a woman running in traffic.
“I’m giving a transport to a black female,” Romaguera can be heard saying to dispatch according to a recording obtained by Local 10.
Mondesir filed his internal affairs complaint on July 15, 2016, but nothing happened until Norman began investigating the complaint in October, which resulted in the cop being placed on desk duty the following month.
According to Norman’s article dated November 12, 2016:
“She explained that the officer told her that she was beautiful, that he liked her, and that he was getting them a room at ‘his’ hotel,” Mondesir wrote in the complaint, filed July 15. “She told me that he came [onto] her, wanting to kiss her, and said she would not leave the room until they finished.”
Mondesir also wrote that she “blanks out from there.” Her attorney, Lopez, has taken a sworn statement from the alleged victim and sent a letter notifying the police department of his intent to file a lawsuit. Lopez believes Romaguera violated her Constitutional rights and much more.
“He committed armed kidnapping and he committed attempted sexual assault,” Lopez said. Romaguera “was armed. She didn’t run. She didn’t call police, because he was the police.”
Lopez said the case was made more egregious, because of the extreme vulnerability of his client.
“She comes into this country, she’s suffering from mental illness, this person is destitute, this person is alone,” Lopez said. “And Javier Romaguera knew that and that is why he preyed on her.”
Lopez said he expects Romaguera to try to use his client’s mental health issues against her.
“He’s hoping that he can just point the finger and say, ‘She’s crazy, she’s making it up,'” said Lopez, adding that the evidence overwhelms any such argument. “The evidence will support that he had no rhyme or reason to take any of the actions he took that night.”
But after two months of desk duty, Romaguera was stripped of his badge and gun, according to an article published by Norman on Monday, January 9, 2017.
He has also been barred from entering the Miami Gardens Police Department as the “investigation” continues, which sources told Local 10 is being conducted by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Speaking of which, another Miami Gardens cop was fired in May 2016 after it was discovered he used his badge to coerce a woman to have sex with him.
But as of today, Deandre Morris has not been charged, even though the Florida Department of Law Enforcement has been investigating him for alleged sexual battery since March of last year.
Romaguera is one of a multitude of Miami Gardens police officers named in a lawsuit filed by Earl Sampson, who made national news in 2013 when it was discovered he had been arrested 56 times for trespassing in the convenience store in which he worked.
In 2015, Miami Gardens Police Chief Stephen Edward Johnson – who had been hired the previous year to repair the department’s negative image from the Sampson story – was arrested and fired for attempting to hire a prostitute through backpage.com, a site that announced this week it was shutting down its adult section after pressure from the government.
Unlike Romaguera and Morris, the chief did not try to use his badge and gun to coerce sex from the women, nor was he in uniform or on the clock at the time.
He merely wanted to pay $100 to have sex with two women, who turned out to be undercover cops, as you can see in the video below.
Miami Gardens is a municipality in north Miami-Dade County, which launched its police department in 2007.
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