A Miami Beach cop will lose just a month's pay and serve 160 hours of suspension after he was caught punching and kicking a handcuffed model nearly two years ago.
Det. Philippe Archer, a 19-year veteran, slugged 29-year-old Megan Adamescu in the face and gave her a swift kick in an incident caught on police department security camera after the model’s arrest following a June 26, 2013, public drunkenness call from a South Beach condo concierge.
Adamescu, stumbling and with her hands cuffed behind her back, appears to try and kick Archer before she’s hit. Her head is bandaged and there is blood on her shoulder in one police photo, while her mug shot shows she had a black eye after the confrontation.
“You met this slight woman’s meager schoolyard kick with excessive, unnecessary, and unwarranted use of force,” reads a report completed by internal affairs and obtained by the Miami Herald.
The confrontation began with Archer questioning a drunken Adamescu and bringing her out on a sidewalk to talk. Archer, who was in plain clothes, asked Adamescu for identification but she couldn’t open her purse so “I removed her purse from her person and retrieved her passport,” according to an arrest report obtained by WBFS-TV.
That’s when Adamescu became confrontational with the black detective, using racial slurs and trying to grab her passport back. Just at that moment, Andrew Mossberg was walking by and thought Archer was trying to steal the intoxicated woman’s purse. The Good Samaritan called police and tried to stop the apparent mugging but instead was assaulted by the officer.
“Apparently that really infuriated him, because he rushed me, kicked me in the head, the left side of the head, and knocks me on the ground,” Mossberg told the CBS affiliate shortly after the incident in 2013. “While I’m on the ground he punches me twice, and I’m knocked out.”
Another bystander took video of the incident and yet another witness called the cops to say, “Some guy is beating up an old guy,” CBS reported.
Once back at the station, a smiling Archer took a photo with Mossberg, who had his head bandaged.
A picture of Mossberg shows his face bruised and reddened from the confrontation. His attorney was furious to learn about the light punishment levied on Archer, who was only in trouble for assaulting Adamescu, not Mossberg.
Archer never documented his use of force against Adamescu in his arrest report.
“Your experience, knowledge of rules, policies and proper practice dictates that you knew you should have reported and documented the events at the police station, you knew that taking a photo with a prisoner was inappropriate, you knew you should have properly secured the prisoners, and you knew you used excessive force,” the report reads, according to the Herald. “Your lack of judgment and your poor decisions defy your tenure as a Miami Beach Police Officer of 19 years.”
Both victims had all of their original charges, including battery and resisting arrest, eventually dropped.
