Three Broward Sheriff’s deputies are facing charges of aggravated battery causing great bodily harm stemming from an alleged rough encounter with a woman they were booking into the jail in 2022, court records show.
Deputy Denia Walker, 37; Deputy Cleopatra Johnnie, 47; and Sgt. Zakiyyah Polk, 44, were booked into the Broward Main Jail on Thursday, jail and court records show. The charge they each face is a second-degree felony.
On Oct. 4, 2022, Walker, Johnnie and Polk were processing a 38-year-old woman at the Main Jail and took her to a search cell to change into the jail uniform, according to arrest warrants obtained by the South Florida Sun Sentinel through a public records request on Thursday evening.
The woman was being booked into the jail on a misdemeanor driving under the influence charge, Broward County court records show. The case was dropped in May 2023.
The deputies told the woman to remove all of her clothes, including her bra, the warrants said, but then began arguing about taking off the bra.
Polk shoved the woman backward, and then all three deputies allegedly “punched and kicked” her multiple times, according to the warrants. Walker sprayed the woman with pepper spray, and Polk shocked her with her Taser, the warrants say.
Cameras in the Main Jail recorded the incident, and the video was reviewed by the Broward State Attorney’s Office investigator who authored the arrest warrants on Tuesday. The video showed that the woman was “clearly dragged behind the yellow demarcation line, which identifies the ‘blind spot’ where an individual is able to change without being observed on the video,” the warrants say.
BSO nursing staff treated the woman immediately afterward. She had significant bruising underneath her right eye and a bruised and swollen face, according to the warrants. At a hospital after she was released, the woman learned she had a skin infection where she had been shocked with the Taser.
The warrants did not provide additional information. Some sections of the warrants obtained by the Sun Sentinel are redacted.
Spokespersons for the Sheriff’s Office did not respond to an email Thursday afternoon seeking information on the incident that led to the charges and the deputies’ current employment status.
Polk’s attorney Eric Schwartzreich told the Sun Sentinel on Thursday afternoon that he has not yet seen video of the incident. Polk has worked for the Sheriff’s Office for 17 years.
“Working as a detention deputy in jail is fraught with danger. There are heightened sensitivities involved,” Schwartzreich said. “I’ve gotten to know my client very well. There’s more to this story than what the charges say.”
Michael Gottlieb, Johnnie’s attorney, said, “Situations happen when people are booked in jail.”
“Inmates are not always acting rationally, and they do not always respond to verbal and physical commands,” Gottlieb said. “The fact that someone is physically hurt is not proof that a crime was committed.”
Walker’s attorney Jeremy Kroll said his client has worked as a detention deputy for a decade and “we look forward to vigorously defending her in court.”
All three deputies were later transferred to the Paul Rein Detention Facility and had been released as of Thursday evening. A judge signed orders that they be released from custody on $7,500 bonds.
There have been multiple reviews internally by BSO and by the State Attorney’s Office in recent years related to actions of deputies within the Broward County jails.
In 2023, Broward jail deputy Ke’Shondra Davis was accused of a misdemeanor battery charge stemming from a 2022 incident where she was relocating inmates and one made a comment to her, according to a statement from the Sheriff’s Office at the time. The statement did not specify the nature of the comment. Davis then “confronted the inmate and struck him with her hand multiple times,” the statement said. Court records in the case were not accessible Thursday evening.
Also in 2023, Anderson Jean, a detention deputy, was arrested after an investigation found that he had allegedly worked with an inmate and the inmate’s wife to smuggle drugs and other contraband into the jail for the inmate to then sell. He pleaded guilty in June 2024 and was sentenced to two years of community control, followed by three years of probation, court records show.
In 2021, inmate Kevin Desir died days after a violent struggle inside of his cell with six deputies as he was suffering an apparent mental breakdown. A medical examiner who performed Desir’s autopsy ruled his cause and manner of death were undetermined. The Sheriff’s Office in its own internal investigation and the State Attorney’s Office in 2022 cleared all deputies who were involved. Desir’s family filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in 2023.
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