A soldier wrongly beaten and arrested by Jorge Mercado — the Miami Beach police officer who Tasered teenage tagger Israel Hernandez before he died — says he and another service member were forced to quash their complaint in order to save their families and careers.

Luis Maldonado says he and buddy Randy Vega faced a painful choice: either drop their complaint against Mercado and three other Miami Beach cops, or drop out of the military in order to fight the bogus charges.

“The overwhelmingly negative effects that such a pending court battle would have had on our careers was not something we could afford to endure or put our families through,” Maldonado said in a letter to Riptide. “For these reasons, we chose to remove ourselves from this situation knowing full well that somewhere down the line, these police officers would eventually seriously injure or kill some other individual.”

See also: Cop Who Tasered Israel Hernandez Was Once Accused of Tasering, Beating Iraq War Veteran

Maldonado and Vega were arrested in 2008 after Mercado and three other cops allegedly burst into their South Beach hotel room and began beating the two soldiers for no reason. Vega, just back from a stint in Iraq, was Tasered.

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