Holmes Beach Police Department officers tased an autistic passenger during a traffic stop

Francisco Diaz-Burgos was riding in the passenger seat of his family’s 2012 Hyundai when following an altercation during a routine traffic stop, authorities threw the 30-year-old autistic man to the ground, stunned him multiple times, and arrested him.

The family was pulled over on Sept. 10 after Holmes Beach police received an alert from the city’s license plate recognition system, which scans the license plates of all cars that come onto Anna Maria Island. It alerted officers that the registered owner of the vehicle did not have a valid driver’s license.

Despite not having a license in almost 20 years, Orlando Diaz was driving his wife and his autistic son, Francisco, during a trip to the store that evening. He is undocumented, according to police, and the infraction wasn’t his first offense; he has been found guilty of driving without a license three times since 2023. The officer decided to arrest the 72-year-old man, resulting in the arrest and incarceration of his autistic son.

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Francisco does not have a record and is a legal U.S. resident. He is one of many foreign children who have received federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program status. He was the only man involved in the situation who spoke English and Spanish, despite his disabilities, and he was interpreting for the officer who could not communicate with Orlando while he arrested him.

When the officer cuffed one of his father’s hands, Francisco reached for his father’s arms and came between him and the officer. He was met with force.

Diaz-Burgos was slapped with five charges: two counts of battery on a law enforcement officer, two counts of resisting arrest with violence and resisting, obstructing or opposing an officer without violence, court records show.

His father, Diaz, is charged with driving with a license that is suspended or revoked after prior convictions, as well as resisting, obstructing or opposing an officer without violence.

“All I’m saying for sure is that I think they punished him because of what happened,” Bradenton-based attorney C.J. Czaia said. “This was just a traffic stop, and it evolved into this.”

Traffic stop in Holmes Beach results in tasing of an autistic passenger

Holmes Beach police officer Chrisopher Liotti did not know that Francisco was on the autism spectrum until after he had already started his arrest. It was not reported in any initial police reports either, although Liotti did address the matter in a supplemental report signed on Oct. 30.

Liotti started the night sitting in his patrol vehicle at the intersection of Eastbay Drive and Manatee Avenue when he received a notification from a license plate recognition system about the Diaz family’s 2012 Grey Hyundai.

The notification indicated that the vehicle’s registered owner, Diaz, does not have a valid license. It expired 20 years ago.

Liotti encountered a language barrier when he pulled Diaz over. Diaz-Burgos was the only person at the scene who could communicate with the officer and his parents. Wearing a face mask and gloves, he stood close to the officer and his father while they were questioned just outside of their Hyundai’s driver-side door.

“Over the next two minutes, Francisco translated my questions and explanations for Mr. Diaz, during which all parties remained calm until the upcoming arrest notification,” Liotti wrote. “Upon notification of the arrest, Mr. Diaz became visibly upset, prompting a similar reaction from Francisco (Diaz-Burgos). At this point, Francisco’s autism diagnosis remained unknown to me.”

In the panic that ensued, Diaz and his wife pushed Diaz-Burgos away from Liotti, then he was kept away by his mother alone after Liotti pulled Diaz away from the family and finished handcuffing him.

Another officer, Joshua Betts, arrived on the scene at about this time. Liotti had already handcuffed Diaz, so Betts helped escort him to the passenger side of Liotti’s patrol vehicle. He struggled to place him into the vehicle and to communicate with him until suddenly Diaz went completely limp. Betts checked his vitals and called for Emergency Medical Services support. Diaz then layed on the ground until after EMS arrived.

“It appeared the subject may have been either experiencing a medical episode or simply refusing to comply with law enforcement,” Betts wrote in his report. “I placed the subject on the ground in the recovery position and immediately checked for a pulse and monitored his breathing.

“I was later informed by Ofc. Liotti that medical staff could not find a reason or have an explanation as to what caused the subject to suddenly become unresponsive,” he wrote.

At about the same time, Officer Alexander Hurt turned his attention to arresting Diaz-Burgos — who had returned to the passenger seat in the Hyundai. Liotti assisted him as well after passing Diaz off to Betts. Hurt grabbed Diaz-Burgos by the wrist, triggering a response, and then interpreted the movement as aggressive so he threw Diaz-Burgos to the ground, video shows. Police reports termed the motion as “directing” Diaz-Burgos to the ground. It was during the ensuing struggle that officers claim Diaz-Burgos punched Hurt, although the Herald-Tribune could not identify clear footage that corroborates the claim. During a brief struggle, he was drive-stunned multiple times.

Drive stunning is a technique where the TASER’s exposed conductors are used to deliver painful shock without the use of its projectile prongs, which are meant to incapacitate a target.

Body cam footage shows that Francisco’s mother tried repeatedly, while in a tearful and panicked state, to alert officers that her son has autism during the struggle. She speaks only Spanish and very little broken English.

“My son, he has autismo,” she cried aloud many times during the arrest. “He has Asperger’s.”

Liotti wrote that her warnings were “unintelligible remarks,” although he acknowledged understanding the word “autismo” in his report. The woman shouted in English despite her language barrier, video shows.

“Ms. Diaz began shouting ‘Autismo’ in a distressed tone, repeating this statement four times along with other unintelligible remarks,” he wrote.

Francisco and his father were each transported to Blake Medical Center for medical evaluation and transported to jail in accordance with Manatee County Sheriff’s Office policies.

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Czaia, who represents Francisco on the case, told the Herald-Tribune that Francisco was held in jail for more than three weeks and has developed post-traumatic stress disorder from the incident.

Holmes Beach Police Chief William Tokajer defended the force used by the responding officers and said they acted within department policy.

“Body cam footage is clear that the son fought with the officer over his dad, and that’s a felony,” Tokajer said. “You don’t get a break on that.”

“The officer had no indication that the son was autistic,” he said. “The parents offered the son up as being used as an interpreter. The dad, then, when he was told he was under arrest, immediately got agitated and got upset and triggered the son.”

Diaz-Burgos held in jail for weeks until good Samaritan pays bond

Orlando bonded out two days after his arrest, but Francisco was incarcerated for at least three weeks. His attorney, Czaia, said delays prevented his release until a good Samaritan paid for his bond. He was released on Oct. 4.

Part of the problem, Czaia said, was that nowhere within the probable cause affidavit was it mentioned that Francisco has autism. So, there was no way for the public defender, who was initially appointed to represent Francisco, nor for the judge overseeing the first appearance to know he has autism.

“It’s up to the officer to be ethical and honest and correct in the report, and they weren’t,” Czaia said. “And they chose to charge him with five charges.”

The first time Francisco Diaz’s autism is officially mentioned is in a supplemental report filled out by Officer Liotti on Oct. 30, records show.

While Czaia does not represent Diaz, he believes Orlando should not have been arrested that evening. He said that officers have discretion as to whether they arrest an individual by taking them to jail or by arresting them by providing a Notice to Appear that says the individual needs to report to court on a certain date. If a person fails to comply with the notice, then a judge would issue a bench warrant for their arrest.

Court records indicate that an arraignment was scheduled in Francisco’s case on Nov. 1. He has already entered a plea of not guilty and a case management hearing has been scheduled in his case for early December.

“There was a failure from beginning to end in dealing with this young person,” Czaia said. “He was a very gentle creature. He’s suffering from PTSD. Now, he’s really messed up from this.”

Brodsky sidesteps police tasings of those with mental health conditions

The incident involving the Diaz family is just getting underway in court, but law enforcement officials said they have 12th Judicial Circuit State Attorney Ed Brodsky’s support. His office is prosecuting the case.

On Tuesday, Brodsky said the case is being carefully considered and that his office is looking at all the circumstances surrounding the arrests of Diaz-Burgos and his father, including that Orlando Diaz was driving while having a repeat history of driving with no license. Brodsky added that he’s aware that officers didn’t initially know Diaz-Burgos has autism and that there appeared to be a language barrier during the arrest.

“Unfortunately, law enforcement did meet with resistance during the arrest, I mean, what would have been a peaceful arrest turned into something else because there wasn’t cooperation by both parties, and unfortunately that escalated things to another level to affect the arrest of them,” Brodsky said.

Brodsky said he was limited in what information he could share since the case is pending in court, but said his office is aware that Tokajer and a specialist met with the family following the incident.

The incident is the second arrest by a local law enforcement agency in Manatee County where tasers were deployed against a man with a mental health condition made headlines. Breonte Johnson-Davis was tased by the Palmetto Police Department in November 2023 during a mental health episode, and the 36-year-old ended up dead at the hospital following the incident.

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Brodsky declined that case, and records show his office also argued that the Johnson-Davis tasing was justified. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement absolved the officers involved in the incident of wrongdoing, although one former officer from the Bradenton Police Department who assisted with Davis’ arrest eventually lost his job.

New training for Holmes Beach Police Department officers

Tokajer has recruited a specialist with situations that involve individuals with autism from the Aventura Police Department to provide additional training for police department officers.

“She has a son that’s autistic, that’s high functioning (and) he’s in his 30s. So, she could relate,” Tokajer said. “She gave me some insight as to autism and how this would be something that would have been missed by the officers because of the lack of visuals.”

The specialist also agreed to meet with the family and talk with them about how to approach future encounters with law enforcement, and agreed to look into getting a special ID card for Francisco that would identify that he is on the autism spectrum, Tokajer said.

Reflecting back on the traffic stop, Tokajer said that had his officer known from the start that Francisco had autism, he would have handled the situation differently — he either wouldn’t have asked Francisco to be the translator, or he would have had the 30-year-old return to the car before placing his father under arrest.

“Any training that we can get, you know, in all areas, we always do it,” Tokajer said. “We do a lot of continuing education for mental health and critical incident training and dealing with autism is just another level of continuing education that we’ll go through.”

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Police tased an autistic man during a traffic stop in Holmes Beach

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