A Homestead police officer was fired recently after a woman complained that he asked her to show him her breasts and bra, and asked what color underwear she was wearing.
Juan Senabre, a six-year veteran, was fired in June after an internal affairs investigation led the police chief and a board of senior officers to recommend Senabre’s termination. His attorney, identified in city documents as Teri Guttman-Valdes, didn’t return calls for comment.
Senabre’s termination will go to arbitration, according to a city spokeswoman, and he could get his job back.
Here’s what happened, according to city documents:
Zenaida Figueroa-Ortiz and her boyfriend parked on the side of Krome Terrace to eat some food they had just bought. While they were parked, Senabre drove by twice in his police car.
The couple decided to drive a short distance to a friend’s house, where Senabre stopped Figueroa-Ortiz as she stepped out of her car, telling her she had a suspended license.
Figueroa-Ortiz later told internal affairs investigators that Senabre told her she would be arrested, and put her in his police car. But he didn’t take her to the police station.
Instead, Figueroa-Ortiz claimed Senabre drove around the corner to a dark apartment complex, and turned off the car’s headlights.
“I’m going to help you so you don’t go to jail,” Senabre said, according to Figueroa-Ortiz’s statement.
Then, she told investigators, he asked, “Have you ever been with a crazy policeman?”
Figueroa-Ortiz told investigators she told Senabre she’s “not that type of girl,” and asked to be taken to jail. Senabre then asked to see the woman’s breasts, according to the internal affairs report.
When she refused, Senabre allegedly asked to see Figueroa-Ortiz’s bra. She still refused, and a car started coming toward where they were parked.
Senabre turned on his headlights and took Figueroa-Ortiz back to her friend’s home, telling Figueroa-Ortiz to meet him at court the next day to take care of her suspended license. It’s unclear from the investigative documents whether the woman met with the officer again.
Figueroa-Ortiz reported the incident to Homestead police a few days later.
According to the internal affairs report, Senabre also radioed that he was responding to a call for service at a time when he was running Figueroa-Ortiz’s information through a police database. The call for service, meanwhile, had come from a reserve police officer, who told investigators that no one responded.
At a hearing in front of an assistant city manager, Senabre’s attorney tried to cast doubt on the woman’s complaint, saying there is no apartment complex where the incident is alleged to have happened, and that one of the four witnesses wasn’t able to pick Senabre out of a lineup, according to city documents. Still, the city decided to fire Senabre.
The internal affairs investigation found that Senabre violated several department and city rules, including rules that require an officer to:
• Not behave in a way that embarrasses the department.
• Competently carry out his or her duties.
• Be truthful.
Senabre had been in trouble before.
Police brass recommended Senabre for a five-day suspension after he failed to arrest a man whose ex-wife called police and said she had been strangled. Instead, Senabre had the man committed to a hospital because he was “intoxicated, mixing alcohol and prescription medication, and wanting to kill himself,” according to investigation documents. He didn’t serve the suspension because the investigation took too long under Florida law.
He was suspended for two days after he ripped up payroll checks while making an arrest in a possible fraud case, instead of impounding them in accordance with department procedure. A witness also complained Senabre had roughed up the suspect and arrested the wrong man in the case, but the department didn’t have enough information to prove the allegations.
Senabre has had two other complaints against him, but those files are not available because state retention laws allow records to be destroyed after a certain amount of time. Neither of those complaints was sustained by internal affairs investigators.
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