Falcinelli case: student sues Miami police for shocking arrest 2024

Milan, 25 February (LaPresse) – Matteo Falcinelli – the Italian student who, in February 2024, was stopped outside a nightclub in Miami, where he was attending a master’s degree in Tourism Management at Florida International University, and was subjected to particularly violent detention – is taking legal action in the United States against the North Miami Police Department. The law firm The X-Law Group P.C. announced that on 20 February 2026, together with David Gammill of Gammill Law Accident & Injury Lawyers and Christopher Lomax of Lomax Legal PLLC, it filed “two major lawsuits that bring to light serious allegations of police brutality, off-duty misconduct and systemic failures in accountability mechanisms within the North Miami Beach Police Department”. The lawsuits were filed in the United States on behalf of Matteo Falcinelli on the second anniversary of the incident. Falcinelli alleges that on 25 February 2024, he was subjected to unprovoked and progressively escalating violence, initially outside a North Miami Beach establishment and subsequently inside a North Miami Beach Police Department detention facility, despite posing no real threat to anyone at any time. The first lawsuit, filed in Miami-Dade County Court, alleges that two North Miami Beach Police Department officers, employed off-duty as security guards at Dean’s Gold, turned a minor dispute over Falcinelli’s personal property into a violent intervention – assaulting him, wrongfully detaining him and causing him serious injury and physical suffering while he was simply attempting to retrieve his mobile phones. The second lawsuit, filed in federal court, alleges that once in custody, several officers from the North Miami Beach Police Department subjected Falcinelli to extreme and punitive use of force inside a detention cell, including immobilising him in a hog-tie position while he was already handcuffed. This technique has been widely criticised by law enforcement experts for the serious risk of injury and positional asphyxia.