An ex-cop turned porn producer says that Miramar and its cops went out of their way to wrongly arrest him on rape charges, so that man, Lavont Flanders Jr., wants the city to pay him for his troubles, according to a recent court filing.
Flanders, a former Miami Beach police officer and bus driver, was arrested in July 2007 on charges of raping at least two women.
At the time, police said Flanders lured aspiring models -- whom he met on ModelMayhem.com -- to a Miramar warehouse, pretending to be a photographer. Flanders is said to have promised the women commercial work. Instead, cops say, Flanders drugged these women, then videotaped them having sex with various men. Dozens of women have come forward with similar accounts.
Most of the charges have recently been dropped against Flanders. Now, however, he's bringing his own charges against Miramar: Flanders says that cops arrested him months after a victim said that the sex was actually consensual, a Broward County Civil Court filing claims.
In the legal docs that authorized the arrest, Flanders says the cops made sure to knowingly omit the victim's statement so they could arrest him anyway.
Around the same time, Flanders was involved in a lawsuit against the Miami Beach Police Department. After two years on the force, Flanders got fired in 1997. Internal Affairs determined that Flanders had lied about his address and gave a woman a ride in his police cruiser after hours. Flanders wanted his job back and wound up suing the department in 2001. The rape arrest, Flanders said, ruined his chances at a favorable outcome in that suit.
At one time, Flanders claims, a Miramar police agent even said that he could "kiss that job goodbye," suggesting that the P.D. "maliciously" targeted him.
Miramar police spokesman Tania Rues said the department "vehemently denies" that claim, but she declined to comment further, citing the lawsuit.
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