MIAMI – A man shot by a Miami police officer outside of Bayfront Park Sunday appeared in court remotely from his hospital bed Thursday.
Menelek Clarke, 21, of Lauderhill, is facing four felony charges in connection with the incident.
5 p.m. report:
He’s accused of disobeying an officer directing traffic and running into him. Cellphone video shows the officer firing his gun while on the hood of Clarke’s car.
Clarke’s sister has said her brother didn’t intend to hit the officer.
An arrest report lays out the officer’s version of events.
Clarke, it states, “began slowly driving towards Officer (redacted) who can be seen on body-worn camera using a whistle and raising his hand with his palm facing outward, signaling (him) to stop.”
“Despite these clear commands, (Clarke) failed to stop and continued driving toward Officer (redacted). Based on my review of the body-worn camera footage, (Clarke’s) vehicle appears to make contact with Officer (redacted), causing him to bend forward and place both hands on the hood of the vehicle to maintain his balance.”
Clarke’s attorney, Michael Orenstein, also appeared remotely in bond court Thursday.
He said there were “a bunch of people in another lane that the officer was letting go by and he had not let them move. He was going about a mile or two an hour.”
“Whether or not the officer banged on the hood, whether or not the officer was propelled on it, (it) didn’t look like he was propelled on the hood,” Orenstein said. “To me, it looked like he was on the hood and he was immediately shooting his ― discharging his firearm into the windshield."
Orenstein later spoke to Local 10 News.
“I definitely want answers. And the family wants answers. I mean, their son, 21-year-old son, was shot multiple times and almost was killed,” Orenstein said. “They definitely want answers.”
Clarke remained in intensive care Thursday.
“I see the officer immediately up at the windshield shooting into the car. It’s excessive force. It’s an excessive reaction by an officer to an interaction with a citizen,” Orenstein said. “He has an injury to ― he got shot in his arm, right arm, that bullet, or a second bullet, entered his chest cavity, collapsed his lung. He has a tube in his lung and he had another bullet that is still lodged in his right leg, right thigh."
Wayne Black, a former police officer who now runs an unrelated investigative and security firm, told Local 10 News that decades of experience tells him the Miami officer, while on the hood of that car, had every right to open fire.
“He was armed with a 5,000 pound car, the officer was in uniform, he should’ve stopped,” said Black. ”The law in Florida is pretty simple. When there’s a substantial likelihood that you’re in fear of death or great bodily harm, you have the right to use lethal force, which is what he did.”
Prosecutors, in asking for a pre-trial detention motion, pointed out that Clarke has an open case of aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer in Broward County stemming from an October 2023 arrest in which he’s accused of pulling a gun on a security guard trying to keep him out of Central Broward Park in Lauderhill, then reaching for the weapon as a Broward Sheriff’s Office deputy tried to do the same.
In this latest case, Clarke is facing charges of aggravated battery on a law enforcement officer, leaving the scene of a crash with no serious bodily injury, fleeing and eluding a police officer and resisting an officer with violence.
Ultimately, the judge gave Clarke a bond of more than $8,500, denying the state’s request for a pre-trial detention hearing.