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A U.S. Olympic track and field star is facing charges in Miami Beach after he was tackled by police and tased, bodycam footage shows.
However, a lawyer for Fred Kerley, 29, said the police “overreacted.”
The footage captured Kerley, wearing a gray hoodie, having an argument with four police officers that escalated into a physical confrontation Thursday night. The officers wrestled him to the ground before stepping away from him as he was tased in the lower back.
Police were involved in an unrelated investigation on 9th Street in Miami Beach when the track star “approached” officers around 11:20 p.m. “with an aggressive demeanor” due to concern about his vehicle parked nearby, according to an arrest report obtained by CBS News.
Kerley argued with police and his girlfriend, who tried to intervene, the report said. Then Kerley got into a fight with the cops.
One cop “delivered multiple hammer fists” toward the athlete’s head and elbows. Another reportedly told Kerley as he lay on the ground: “Stop resisting!”
The Olympian then replied: “I’m not resisting, get off of me, bro.” Officers tased him, prompting him to collapse onto his stomach, according to the report.
Police wrote that Kerley “disrupted the flow of pedestrian traffic and caused a crowd on the nearest sidewalk” and “endangered the safety” of the staff and customers at a nearby restaurant.
He was arrested on charges of battery, resisting an officer without violence and disorderly conduct, records show.
His lawyer, Richard L. Cooper, issued a statement to CBS News. “It is clear from all available recordings of the arrest (including police worn body camera) that the police overreacted to an otherwise peaceful interaction with Mr. Kerley,” Cooper said.
Kerley appeared in court on Friday, where a judge did not find probable cause for the disorderly conduct charge, the network reported.
He was booked into the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on Friday. The 29-year-old has since been released on his own recognizance, records show.
The police stood by their response.
“Mr. Kerley battered one of our officers and pushed him in the chest, at which point the officers put their hands on him and tasered him,” Officer Christopher Bess told CBS News. “The message is very clear that when you see officers engaged in a scene give them some distance.”
“This could have been prevented,” Bess said. “Our officers tried multiple times to de-escalate but Mr. Kerley kept rushing our officers.”
His girlfriend, Cleo Rahman who’s better known as Dj Sky High Baby, was also charged with resisting arrest. The police report stated that “her actions took several officers to divert their attention from assisting the officers to deal with her.”
In the bodycam footage, she can be heard yelling: “Stop! Stop! He didn’t do anything!”
She appeared to have recorded the incident on her phone.
“He was not aggressive,” she told CBS News in a statement. “This does not give police the right to push him and be aggressive for no reason. He’s an athlete. He is team USA. It is not like he is playing for another team. He is here. This was so unfortunate.”
In the aftermath of the athlete’s arrest, police added additional charges of robbery/strongarm and domestic battery against Kerley, records show. These counts stemmed from a May 7 incident involving an alleged fight with his ex-wife; police told CBS News they were not able to find him at the time.
He competed in the Paris games over the summer while the charges in the alleged domestic incident were under investigation.
The post-arrest charges resulted “from a falsified accusation that has resurfaced because of this new media attention from last night’s wrongful arrest,” Cooper said.
The attorney continued: “I can say that Mr. Kerley is a record-breaking athlete who has honorably and successfully represented our nation in the Olympics many times. These charges are false and indicate the brutal police state that Miami Beach has become.”
Kerley won a silver medal in the 100m at the 2020 Olympics and won a bronze medal in the same race at the 2024 Olympics.
