LaToya Ratlieff expressed her disappointment regarding the exoneration of a Fort Lauderdale detective who shot her in the face with a rubber bullet while at a Black Lives Matter protest in May 2020. She held a press conference on Friday.
The press conference, which multiple news outlets in the area covered, was Ratlieff’s response to the news that a Fort Lauderdale Police Department investigation found Detective Eliezer Ramos innocent of “using excessive force” and “careless use of a firearm.”
“I would like to say that I was disappointed, but honestly, it was expected,” the woman said. “We’ve seen this happen before. We’ve seen this happen too many times, and we’ve seen this happen tremendously when it comes to Black lives.”
Ratlieff further expressed that she was not surprised by the determination but that Ramos’ actions could have left her with permanent damage.
“I felt like I waited so many months, so many months to find out something that I knew was going to happen, but to hear it and to feel it and to know that nothing is going to happen to an officer that could have blinded me,” she said. “I could be sitting here right now blind in one eye because of his carelessness.”
On Thursday, Fort Lauderdale Police released the official document that determined the agency’s decision. It indicated that Ratlieff was not the intended target. Because Ramos wasn’t aiming for the woman specifically but was justifiably targeting an alleged suspect– he wasn’t at fault.
The 90-page investigative report included a detailed account of what led up to Ramos discharging the “less than lethal weapon.”
“Ms. LaToya Ratlieff crossed directly within the deployed munitions path of travel. The 40mm eXact iMpact sponge baton round struck Ms. Ratlieff in the head, causing her to immediately fall to the ground. Nearby civilians rallied around Ms. Ratlieff in an attempt to offer assistance,” the internal report explained.
Ratlieff maintained that Ramos couldn’t recognize a specific target due to the smoke from the tear gas the SWAT team deployed.
She suffered devastating injuries to her face, and she needed 20 stitches to repair the damage to her eye.
Fort Lauderdale’s Interim Police Chief apologized to Ratlieff during a press conference on Thursday, the Miami Herald reported.
“On behalf of the men and women of the Fort Lauderdale Police Department, I want to express my sincere apology for the experience you have had with our police department,” he said.
Ratlieff wasn’t impressed by the department’s apology.
“Interim Chief Patrick Lynn gets to give a very, very bland apology for my experience as if I had a bad dinner at a restaurant. It’s disingenuous, it’s disheartening, but if nothing else it’s invigorating,” she told CBS News.
The woman’s original plan for the press conference was to speak against House Bill 1 (HB1). It’s a bill that aims to crack down on protests that become violent or destroy property.
“HB1 would criminalize the actions of law-abiding citizens simply because strangers attending the same demonstration might break the law,” Ratlieff explained. “If HB 1 would have been the law on May 31, the organizers could have been criminally liable, and even myself, as a victim, could have been criminally liable.”
CBS News reported that Attorney Michael Davis, who represents Ratlieff, said the inquiry was a farce.
“This investigation has never been about finding out what actually happened,” Davis said. “This investigation has always been about trying to justify what happened.”
