Heavily armed Florida police officers descended on the homes of two men accused of illegally voting and arrested one of them at gunpoint as part of Governor Ron DeSantis’s crackdown on voter fraud, new body-camera footage obtained by the Guardian can reveal.
Both men were in their underwear, unarmed, and placed in handcuffs as police arrested them in front of their Miami-Dade county homes on 18 August.
“Let me put on my pants,” Ronald Miller, 58, said shortly before noon, when he opened the door to find police officers surrounding his home, their guns pointed at him. “What happened?” he asked as officers instructed him to come outside, their guns still trained on him.
As they placed him in handcuffs, agents noted that Robert Wood had taken a long time to answer the door when they knocked on it. “I was asleep,” he said.
The Guardian obtained video of both arrests through public records requests with the Miami-Dade police department, which assisted with executing warrants for both men.
Both Wood and Miller declined to be interviewed. Miller’s attorney, Robert Barrar, described the video of his client’s arrest as “abominable”.
“I think they’re trying to make an example of him because he’s Black. It’s horrible,” he said.