Two Miami Beach Police officers have been reprimanded, and will undergo additional training, after a woman claimed they disrobed her and left her naked over a $20 cab fare.
The disciplinary action was handed down Tuesday to Officers Joseph Gonzalez and Giordano Cardoso in the 2013 incident.
Candice Padavick had claimed the officers came to her apartment for no reason and one of them grabbed her arm and her robe came off. Instead of aiding her, the officer gawked at her in the nude for a considerable time and left her nude for about 30 minutes, Padavick claimed.
Reached on Tuesday, Padavick said the punishment isn't enough for what she endured.
"I want justice. I don't want this to happen to anyone else," she said.
Surveillance video showed Padavick moments before heading to her apartment with friends and a cab driver waiting in the lobby to be paid after his credit card machine didn't work, a $20 fare the internal affairs report showed was paid by the building's security guard.
The report said when the officers arrived, Officer Cardoso indicated Padavick had to pay the fare. She wound up arrested and charged with resisting arrest, battery on a law enforcement officer, and petit theft for no payment of the taxi ride. The charges were later dropped.
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"I mean the way that I was treated was just like a piece of trash, throwing me around," Padavick said. "What I was thinking was do any of these officers have wives or daughters and if they could even imagine putting them through something like that."
Padavick had filed a complaint in November but investigators determined they could not verify her allegation and that she was intoxicated. The officers did have the legal authority to enter her apartment, the investigators determined.
But Investigators said Cardoso and Gonzalez broke the rules when reporting the night's events saying.
"In numerous instances Officers Cardoso and Gonzalez make contradictory statements between their reports, their depositions, and their internal affairs interview," the report said.
NBC 6 reached the attorney for the officers, who said Padavick committed battery on one of the officers and said they did the right thing to make sure she paid the cab fare.
Padavick could end up filing a lawsuit, her attorney said.
"So the two officers who were the primary officers in this case were either lying or they were covering up for each other," attorney David Kubiliun said. "The behavior of some of these officers should not be tolerated."
