Florida ex-deputy declared eligible in South Dakota
A Florida jury found Kevin Fanti not-guilty of using excessive force in the 2019 incident at the Broward County jail. However, in 2023, his Florida certification was revoked. Since then, Fanti has been working for private security. He recently applied for certification in South Dakota.
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On Tuesday, the South Dakota Law Enforcement Officers Standards and Training Commission listened to evidence, spent 30 minutes discussing the matter in executive session, and ultimately declared Fanti eligible to be a law enforcement officer here.
The panel's decision was split. Lincoln County State's Attorney Thomas Wollmann and South Dakota Attorney General voted no.
The commission, which was meeting in Deadwood, had viewed part of a jailhouse video that showed Fanti punching the inmate twice in the head and then punching the inmate two more times on the ground. The commission also heard a review from special investigating agent Guy DiBenedetto.
Fanti, who represented himself, told the commission that he was in fear of being choked by the inmate, whose hands were cuffed in front of him. 'I'm much more mature now,' said Fanti, who vowed that he wouldn't do it again.
Panel denies law officer eligibility for prospect
Mark Vargo, who serves as the commission's attorney, asked Fanti what he would do differently. Fanti said he would back up and let the jail staff take care of the inmate.
Fanti told the commission that he arrived in the United States at age 21 from Brazil, taught himself English, and in 2018 went to the law enforcement academy in Florida. He became a patrol deputy. He said no other complaints have been filed against him.
Dan Satterlee, director of the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation, serves as the commission's chair. Satterlee asked Fanti why he approached the inmate with a document. 'I didn't want him to come towards us again,' Fanti said. 'I just decided to pick it up and give it back to him, so he didn't have to come towards us.'
Fanti added that he has reflected a lot about what happened. 'There's not a single day that passes that this doesn't come to mind,' Fanti said.
At Fanti's request, the commission watched the remainder of the video showing what happened prior to Fanti striking the inmate.
Commission attorney Vargo in closing said that Fanti 'physically initiated contact' and the inmate reacted to Fanti's action. 'The marshals stepped in and told Mister Fanti to get back,' Vargo said.
Fanti responded, 'I can't change what happened in the past. I can change what will happen in the future.' He added, 'This means a lot to me, to be a law enforcement officer again. I can make a difference in the world.'
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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CASA (2025), which held that federal courts typically should not issue injunctions that extend beyond the individual parties to a lawsuit. So, even if the one plaintiff who was stopped twice may obtain an injunction, that court order might have to be so narrow that it protects him and him alone against future illegal stops. Trump's CASA argument is hardly airtight. Though CASA did hold that broad injunctions are generally discouraged, it did permit them when necessary to give a victorious plaintiff 'complete relief.' Frimpong argued that a broad injunction is warranted in Perdomo, because law enforcement officers cannot reasonably be expected to know which suspects are protected by a court order. 'It would be a fantasy to expect that law enforcement could and would inquire whether a given individual was among the [plaintiffs] before proceeding with a seizure,' she wrote. 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At least some parts of Frimpong's order are probably overly broad In fairness, there are some good reasons to prefer individual lawsuits over wholesale court orders. Fourth Amendment search and seizure cases typically turn on the very specific facts of a particular case. Police might reasonably suspect, for example, that a person spotted with a large wad of cash in a neighborhood where illegal drugs are often sold is engaged in illegal activity. By contrast, police may not have reasonable grounds to suspect a similar person spotted walking near a business where people often make down payments on their new homes. As a general rule, the Fourth Amendment permits police to briefly stop and search someone if they reasonably suspect that person is engaged in illegal activity — or, in an immigration case, of being illegally present in the United States. To be sure, there are some things that law enforcement may almost never consider when determining whether to stop a particular individual. In Kansas v. Glover (2020), for example, the Court said that police may not target someone based on 'nothing more than a demographic profile' or stop and question someone about their immigration status because of their 'Mexican ancestry.' Frimpong's conclusion that ICE may not target someone solely because of their 'apparent race or ethnicity' is consistent with Glover. But Frimpong's conclusion that law enforcement may never reasonably suspect someone of being undocumented solely based on their presence in a particular location is probably a bit of a stretch. As a federal appeals court explained in a 2014 case, day laborer jobs are 'one of the limited options for workers without documents.' These jobs are often grueling, unreliable, and underpaid. They are unattractive to virtually anyone who is authorized to work in the United States and, thus, have less-demanding and better-paying job options available to them. There are at least some cases, in other words, where a law enforcement officer could reasonably suspect someone of being undocumented if they are consistently seen at a location where undocumented workers seek jobs as day laborers — what Frimpong described as a 'day laborer pick up site.' It is difficult to come up with categorical rules governing which factors law enforcement may consider when deciding whom to stop. Even race may be an acceptable factor in very limited circumstances; if multiple witnesses to a robbery tell police that they saw an East Asian man commit the crime, for example, then police could reasonably limit their search to people who appear to be East Asian. This is one reason why cases like Lyons exist: to prevent judges from handing down categorical rules that prevent police from conducting lawful investigations.
