In a lawsuit filed in county court docket, Raphaela Lucarelli, a longtime spa proprietor and spouse of Florida evangelical preacher Daniel Adams, says an earthly misunderstanding over private treatment present in her baggage escalated right into a false arrest on drug trafficking expenses by the hands of the Miami-Dade Police Department.
Lucarelli desires damages for false imprisonment and violations of her constitutional rights in reference to the May 25 airport incident.
“Being held like that’s traumatic, particularly for someone who does not have expertise with the U.S. authorized system,” Lucarelli’s lawyer, Jeremy Friedman at Downs Law, tells New Times. “It is not proper for somebody to be handled like that. The officers acted first and appeared to see in the event that they have been proper later.”
Lucarelli says the saga started when she returned to Florida on an early morning flight after visiting household in Brazil. Upon her arrival at Miami International Airport round 6:00 a.m., U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) discovered her routine of non-public treatment whereas inspecting her baggage. Though she defined that she had authorized prescriptions for the drugs, the brokers introduced her right into a backroom, the place she was “harassed by 5 to seven CBP officers,” Lucarelli says.
Miami-Dade Police Department detectives began trickling in, and the state of affairs deteriorated from there. Lucarelli, who has a Brazilian background, claims one detective “referred to as [her] a Mexican” and tried to stress her into confessing to his illusory narrative that she was trafficking medication.
Despite Lucarelli explaining, again and again, that she might present the prescription paperwork and put police in touch along with her physician, the Miami-Dade detectives positioned her in handcuffs, the lawsuit alleges. They escorted her via Miami International Airport whereas she was in tears.
“All of Plaintiff’s possessions have been taken away and the cops started the in-take course of: fingerprints, orange prisoner jumpsuit, and putting plaintiff right into a cell,” the lawsuit reads, describing Lucarelli’s arrival at a Miami-Dade County jail. “[She] was required to strip bare in entrance of a feminine officer who then made [her] bend over, unfold herself, and cough 4 instances to make sure she was not carrying any undiscovered treatment.”
Lucarelli claims that whereas in custody, she was denied meals and medicine, with one officer telling her, “This just isn’t a resort.” She says she didn’t obtain meals on the jail till 8 p.m. that night time, 14 hours after her arrival at Miami International Airport (MIA).
Her husband, Daniel Adams, a salesman and chief at Good News Ministries, needed to drive from Sarasota to Miami to bail her out of jail. When he paid her bond and requested when she can be launched, one jail staffer allegedly informed him, “There are two speeds: sluggish and cease. And we’re not in a rush.”
The husband waited for hours till Lucarelli was launched round 1 a.m. on the morning of May 26, “fatigued, hungry, depressed, oppressed, and anxious,” in accordance with the lawsuit.
Beyond the monetary damages incurred from having to rent a felony protection lawyer and bond out of jail, Lucarelli says she has suffered from nightmares and different psychiatric trauma from the incident. She says she’s missed work and that she begins “to shake involuntarily any time she is round MIA.”
As she anticipated, the costs in opposition to Lucarelli have been promptly dropped in July.
When reached by New Times, the Miami-Dade Police Department stated it doesn’t touch upon pending litigation.
Friedman, Lucarelli’s lawyer, says the incident resulted in his consumer being positioned on a Department of Homeland Security record, which topics her to questioning, searches, and elevated scrutiny when she flies internationally. Attempts to have her faraway from the record to date have been fruitless even supposing the case in opposition to her was dropped, Friedman says.
“It’s an actual drawback. Anytime she travels internationally, she’s getting questioned about whether or not she’s an alleged drug trafficker. It’s as if one authorities company does not have the flexibility to cross-reference state information to point out that this case was dismissed… that it was a mistake,” Friedman says.Â