KISSIMMEE, Fla. — The Osceola County Sheriff has suspended a deputy without pay after body camera video captured him hitting a patient who was handcuffed to a bed.

The state attorney’s office is now reviewing the case to see whether Deputy Dirio Sinclair will be charged with misdemeanor battery.

The man in the hospital was under arrest, accused of violating a restraining order. There is no mental ward at the sheriff's office, so deputies took the man to AdventHealth Kissimmee for mental-health treatment.

“When we talk about mental health, it affects us all differently,” according to Alyssa Noel, a mental-health expert who watched the video. “And when you’re in a stressful job such as law enforcement, you really need to pay even more attention because now you are responsible for protecting other people in the community.”

In the video, the deputy can be seen pointing his finger at the patient/suspect, who swats the deputy’s hand away. The video then shows the deputy hitting the patient several times.

“It looks like two individuals in crisis to be honest with you,” Osceola County Sheriff Marcos Lopez said. “Since I took office, I promised transparency, and we’re always going to hold our deputies to a higher standard.” 

Lopez said his deputies can also experience a mental-health crisis. But in this case, Lopez said he believes the deputy should have calmed down the man.

The video clip also shows a female deputy who stepped in and asked the original deputy to leave the room.

In these situations, you cannot be at the same emotional level as the person having a breakdown, Noel said.

“You have to stay in control,” she added. “The minute you lose control, that’s when things get out of hand. And I think what can happen in the future is teaching more ways to diffuse the situation.” 

While the Osceola Sheriff’s Office does have crisis intervention training, Lopez said he has seen more encounters between deputies and people in mental-health crises in the past few years so he has decided to create a mental-health division to help deputies to better identify these situations.

Noel said she thinks a mental-health division and access to therapy for all law enforcement is key.

“They see a lot of different things that can cause trauma, and it's important for them to be able to process that trauma and really be able to talk about it with a professional so it doesn't affect their workplace,” Noel added. 

Sinclair had no prior internal affairs investigations before this incident and had been working at the Osceola County Sheriff's Office since 2019, with no law enforcement experience before that.