New allegations could alter the court case for a pair of fired Hialeah police officers charged with kidnapping a homeless man, driving him to an isolated location, and beating him while he was handcuffed last year.
The attorney for one of the officers said Wednesday that e-mails and other data are casting doubt on a key part of the state's case.
The initial incident occurred on December 17, 2022 when Hialeah Police officers Rafael Otano and Lorenzo Orfila arrested Jose Ortega-Gutierrez.
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Ortega-Gutierrez, who is homeless, was placed in handcuffs and put in the back of a Hialeah Police car outside a bakery at a shopping plaza on W. 60th Street for allegedly disturbing the peace.
Although Ortega-Gutierrez had a history of fighting and public drunkenness, surveillance footage from the scene did not show a reason for him to be taken into custody, officials said.
Authorities said the officers took Ortega-Gutierrez to an isolated location where he was beaten and thrown to the ground while still handcuffed.
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In announcing the arrests of the officers back in January, the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office said investigators discovered that GPS on their police vehicles showed Otano and Orfila were outside their assigned sector that day.
But Otano's attorney, Michael Pizzi, told NBC6 the GPS data from his client's squad car is unreliable.
"The GPS system that they are trying to use to falsely charge my client, that the whole GPS system, is a travesty and a sham," Pizzi said. "It malfunctions and doesn't even work and they've concealed this all this time."
Pizzi filed an emergency motion Tuesday, asking the court to exclude GPS data from the case after he said mounds of emails and other materials from the Hialeah Police Department detail how the GPS data from Otano's car and other officers' patrol cars have been repeatedly flagged as "erroneous and flawed" and sometimes places squad cars at wrong or even mystery locations.
"The state attorney’s office and the Hialeah Police Department are attempting to build a case on a GPS system that they say tracked where my client, Officer Otano, was on December 17, 2022 when the system was consistently malfunctioning," Pizzi said. "Six months prior it was in Hialeah and it showed him five miles away in Miami Lakes."
Pizzi added that Otano and Orfila should have never been dragged into court before a judge once the evidence of bad GPS data surfaced.
NBC6 reached out to the Miami-Dade State Attorney's office and the Hialeah Police Department for comment on Pizzi's allegations, but has not heard back.
The issue of the "GPS glitches" is expected to be discussed at a hearing Friday for the two officers. Otano's trial is expected to start Monday.
