By Jason Schwartz
Being a police officer has its hazards including being struck in the butt as a Boca Raton patrolman found out recently.
Officer Jason Cohen was dispatched to a call in the 100 block of NW 2nd Avenue where a woman was removing her belongings from a home she shared with a roommate. The roommate, Eliane Marie Giarelli, became “extremely agitated and began cursing at the woman and Cohen for bringing “these f—ing cops to my house,” Cohen wrote in his report.
At one time, Giarelli, 25, threw her roommate’s belongings out the door, the officer wrote.
As the officer was leaving the home, Giarelli intentionally slammed the door, striking, but not injuring, his backside. When he knocked on the coor to tell her what she had done, she took a stance that he considered to be very aggressive, got very close to the officer and put her right pointer finger just inches from his face, the officer said.
“She was shaking it aggressively and began to scream at me,” he wrote. “I believed that she was about to strike or push me at that point. I responded by placing her in handcuffs, advising that she was under arrest for assault and battery upon me.”
Giarelli was booked into the Palm Beach County Jail on one count of battery on a law enforcement officer and another on simple assault on a law enforcement officer. She was released on $3,000 bond.