Matteo Falcinelli came to Miami from Italy in 2023 to study, and one day enter what he considered one of the biggest tourism markets in the world. The then-25-year-old enrolled in a master’s program at Florida International University’s renowned hospitality school and built his contacts.
That all changed when an argument over getting his money back from a North Miami Beach strip club in 2024 led officers to slam him to the ground, cuff him and later, hog-tie him in a holding cell at the North Miami Beach Police Department.
Police body-camera footage made international news with the Italian minister of foreign affairs condemning Falcinelli’s “violent arrest.”
Two years later, Falcinelli, 27, and his attorneys have sued the City of North Miami Beach and its police department in Miami federal court and Miami-Dade County Circuit Court. They are seeking at least $50,000 in monetary and punitive damages.
“There’s a level of violence that’s imputed on (Falcinelli), where for the aggressors this was just 12 hours. But there’s a lack of acknowledgement that they turned a young man’s life inside out, causing damages and injuries that will have lifelong scars,” Filippo Marchino, Falcinelli’s attorney, told the Herald.
The City of North Miami Beach says its officers followed department policy to the letter and restrained Falcinelli to protect him.
“The decision to restrain him was for his safety,” a city statement says. “North Miami Beach Police acted in accordance with state standards and department policy.
$500 and a cellphone
In the early-morning hours of Feb. 25, 2024, then-26-year-old Falcinelli was partying at Dean’s Gold, a strip club at 2355 NE 163rd St in North Miami Beach.
A staff member alerted two off-duty North Miami Beach officers, Daniel Ruiz and Michel Saint Amour, that Falcinelli was causing a disturbance and refused to leave the club, according to his arrest report. He was eventually escorted out by a security guard but demanded the $500 that he had spent in the club and cellphone back from the business.
Ruiz and Saint Amour repeatedly told Falcinelli to leave the premise, the report says. Police body-camera footage shows Falcinelli repeatedly asking police officers to get his phone from the club. While authorities noted in the arrest report that Falcinelli smelled of alcohol, had slurred speech and blurry eyes, there was no mention of a sobriety test being administered.
Falcinelli then asked an officer his name, according to the video. The officer stayed silent. Seconds later, he appears to touch part of the officer’s uniform.
“You don’t touch that,” the officer said.
“You touch me, you go to jail,” Falcinelli shouted at him.
Falcinelli continued badgering the officers about his phone. He asked for other officers’ names and was, again, instructed to go home.
“I have my right. Give me my freaking phone,” Falcinelli shouted. “Shut the f— up, you and you.”
According to the footage, Falcinelli then moves toward the officer before the officer yanks him by the arm. After a struggle, police tackle Falcinelli to the ground. The video appears to show an officer placing his knees around his neck and shoulder area.
Falcinelli, screaming, was ordered to stop resisting.
“I’m not resisting,” he said. “I’m not resisting.”
When cuffed and placed inside a police cruiser, Falcinelli shouted: “He just hit me, Hit me. Hit me. Look at me. Look at me. With no reason.”
He was taken to the North Miami Beach police station and put in a holding cell. Footage there showed officers hog-tying Falcinelli after he continuously banged his head against a glass wall after being told to stop.
Hog-tying, a restraint method that the Department of Justice has warned against since the 1990s, has been banned in police departments across the country. On the ground, and restrained by his hands and legs, Falcinelli pleaded with officers.
‘Hog tying amounted to torture’
On Feb. 20, Marchino, of The X-Law Group P.C., and Christopher Lomax, of Lomax Legal PLLC, filed a lawsuit in Miami-Dade Circuit Court and another in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Florida.
The defendants in the state case are the strip club, along with officers Saint Amour and Officer Ruiz. Falcinelli’s attorneys claim their client was battered by the officers, who were off-duty and turned a “minor dispute over [his] personal property into a violent takedown.”
Dean’s Gold did not immediately respond for comment. The city has not commented about the suit nor the officers.
The federal lawsuit primarily focuses on what happened to Falcinelli in the holding cell. The suit alleges Falcinelli’s civil rights were violated through excessive force.
“The NMBPD’s treatment of Falcinelli by hog tying him amounted to torture, used as a form of punishment,” the lawsuit alleges. “Hog tying did nothing to provide additional protection to anyone, and least of all to the tortured Falcinelli.”
City and police officials have contended Falcinelli was placed in a leg-hobble restraint — they haven’t labeled it “hog-tying.” The body-cam footage shows Falcinelli’s bound hands and feet tied together with a rope.
The distinction between hog-tying and leg restraints is integral to the federal suit. Falcinelli’s lawyers allege the manufacturer that makes the leg-hobble restraints that North Miami Beach police use — Ripp International Restraints — clearly instructs its customers not to use them to hog-tie an individual.
“The 2019 instructions from the Ripp-branded hobble, for example, say: ‘NEVER Hog-Tie a Prisoner,’” the lawsuit says.
The manufacturer did not immediately respond for comment.
Falcinelli’s legal team said they want transparency brought to the North Miami Beach Police Department on how its officers treated a person in their custody, hoping for institutional change.
“Most officers do an incredibly difficult job with professionalism and integrity,” Marchino said. “But constitutional policing depends on accountability. Communities cannot function when misconduct is ignored, minimized, or treated as routine.”
Police say no wrongdoing
The City of North Miami Beach and its police department have maintained their officers followed policy and restraining Falcinelli was for his own protection.
The department did not launch an internal affairs investigation, a common practice when a police officer’s actions are questioned. The department initiated an administrative review when allegations of wrong-doing mounted. The review found its officers had followed policy.
In the supervisor’s use-of-force report, obtained by the Herald, then-Sgt. Jose Maya wrote, “After reviewing the offense incident report, supplemental reports, photographs, computer-aided dispatch report, body-worn camera footage and statements of all involved parties, I find that [the involved-officers’] actions were consistent within the policy of NMBPD.”
“I also find that the amount of force used to be consistent with the totality of the circumstances and found no violations of the Use of Force Policy 29-89 or any other NMBPD policy as it relates to this incident.”
A Herald review of the use-of-force policy that was in effect at the time shows officers were allowed to use restraint devices as a means to achieve “compliance or custody.” The policy went on to say, “If an officer takes a combative subject into custody, then the hobble restraint may be utilized prior to transport from the scene.”
However, it does not say whether a hobble restraint can be used on a person in a holding cell away from a scene.
The department also has pointed to body-camera footage that showed Facinelli harming himself as proof that he needed to be restrained to protect him from himself.
The Herald reviewed the footage, and it shows officers repeatedly telling Facinelli to stop banging his head against the wall, which he continues to do right before being restrained.
The North Miami Beach police department’s use-of-force policy was updated about three months after the arrest, removing any mention of using a hobble restraint.
An internal police memo sent a few days prior to the updated policy instructed all officers: “Until further notice leg restraints are not to be used. They will be allowed in the future once proper training has occurred.”
It’s unclear if leg restraints are being used today.
Fear and paranoia
Falcinelli said the incident has impacted him significantly.
“You don’t recognize yourself. You lose your self-esteem. You lose those certainties,” he told the Herald in an interview outside Dean’s Gold in May 2025.
In the months following the incident, Falcinelli said he suffered paranoia and was scared to leave his home. He dropped out of FIU and returned to Perugia, Italy — he’s originally from Spoleto.
He has undergone therapy after he realized that his friends and family saw how much the encounter with North Miami Beach police officers had changed him. He has not been able to find full-time employment, he said, and is supported by his mother as he contends with PTSD and muscle pains.
Falcinelli emphasized his main goal in seeking legal recourse against the department is to prevent this from happening to someone else.
“I want to make sure that these things never happen again because I’ve been through it,” he said. “I know exactly what kind of pain, suffering, emotional and physical trauma you go through.”
He also has unanswered questions.
“I’ve been asking myself, ‘Why me?’,” he pleaded. “Why did it happen to me?”
