It's no surprise that Jason Faraone got into a jam for tangling with the cops. He has kicked and punched and cussed and spat at most of the cops who laid a hand on him during his short, unsuccessful life of crime. "Fuck you, you fucking pig!" Faraone snarled at a Wilton Manors cop in 1993, before punching the officer in the face and spitting on him. "Defendant was so violent he tried to kick out the windows of my patrol car," the officer wrote. "[Faraone] said, `If you take these fucking cuffs off me, I'll beat all your asses.' " But his latest arrest on charges of violently resisting officers was different. This time, Faraone had compelling evidence that threatened to shift the focus of the case from his past to the credibility of the Broward sheriff's deputies who arrested him on June 4. "The whole police report is nothing but lies," Faraone wrote in one of many letters complaining about the arrest. "You should be able to use [the deputies'] own words against them." He even had an unlikely ally for his defense. John Tiedeberg, a federally appointed jail observer, disputes the deputies' descripxions of Faraone as a violent, vocal menace. "I'm sorry, but I saw what I saw," Tiedeberg says. But on Monday, facing a trial he could easily lose, Faraone went against his lawyer's advice and took a prosecutor's offer of a plea bargain. In return for pleading no contest to two counts of resisting officers with violence, the prosecutor agreed to a sentence of four months - time Faraone has already served in the county jail. He ends up with two more felony convictions on a growing criminal record, but he also gets out of jail for Christmas. The larger questions raised by his arrest will most likely remain unanswered. "These are tough decisions," says Howard Finkelstein, chief assistant public defender. "As a lawyer, you feel compelled to vindicate your client and also make a statement so that others are not harmed in the future, but as an advocate you have to do what is in the best interest of your client at the time. "It would have been a good fight and a righteous cause, but you never know what a jury will do," Finkelstein continues. "A defendant will sometimes have to be a fool to risk his liberty when you put the keys to the jailhouse in his pocket."

Here comes trouble

At 22, Jason Faraone has already been to prison twice - mainly because of a propensity to mix it up with cops. A few months before he tangled with the Wilton Manors officer, Faraone was arrested for punching a Broward sheriff's detective in the chest. An arrest report says Faraone also kicked a hole in a wall at the sheriff's Tamarac substation. In prison, Faraone racked up 34 reprimands in only 31 months, mostly for disobeying state corrections officers, says Department of Corrections spokeswoman Debbie Buchanan. "When you get that many disciplinary reports, you're trouble," she says. Faraone's talent for mixing it up with cops is second only to his ability to get them in trouble. In jail for probation violations in October 1993, Faraone scuffled with several deputies at the North Broward Detention Center. Some of the officers took things too far, punching Faraone after he was handcuffed. A sergeant later took Faraone aside and challenged him to a one-on-one fight. The end result: Four cops were fired. Faraone went on to prison. But with only three months left on his sentence, he returned to the Broward County Jail in May 1996 to testify against one of the fired cops trying to get his job back. Naturally, trouble followed. On June 4, a trio of jail deputies say Faraone became violent after an officer ordered him back to his cell. They charged him with three counts of resisting officers with violence, a felony that could have sent him to prison for five years minimum. "You don't know who you're fucking with," Deputy Manfreth Neilly recalls Faraone saying. "All I know is he kepx saying, `F-U. I'll F-U up.' He continued stating, `You guys don't know who I am and I got some deputies fired before.' " The deputies say they didn't know Faraone from any of the other 70,000 inmates who come through the county jail each year. Most of them say they don't recall the 1993 investigation at all - even though it was front page news in The Miami Herald and the Sun-Sentinel. Faraone and his lawyer say the charges were payback for getting the North Broward deputies fired back in 1993. "It's classic, classic retaliation," says Assistant Public Defender Jeff Ivashuk. "Their stories are all over the place. They don't match. If you lay down everything everyone says, it's impossible."

`Hostile and aggressive'

At first, the case seems pretty straightforward: rowdy inmate breaks the rules, scuffles with deputies and ends up in shackles. "Faraone had been ordered to his cell several times by myself (Dep. Neilly) and Sgt. Calvin for his continuous banging on the Unit 2 door. Backup was called," the arrest report says. "Dep. J. Martin arrived and assisted with escorting detainee to his cell. At this time, he broke away and attempxed to attack this Deputy (Neilly). He rushed toward this officer with clenched fist. Deputy Martin and I attempxed to restrain him and continue to walk him to his cell. Detainee was still hostile and aggressive." Once in Faraone's cell, Neilly attempxed to handcuff him. They say Faraone resisted violently, once again turning on Neilly. "He was finally handcuffed and shackled (using only necessary force) by Deputies Neilly, Martin, Lintz and Richardt," the report says. "While en route, Mr. Teideberg (federal court monitor) entered the elevator and viewed the latter half of the incident." Faraone says Neilly planned to "jam him up." "I was going to my cell," the inmate wrote. "If this officer did his job the right way and let me go to my cell instead of pushing and grabbing me ... he would not have to lie about what happened.   " One of the few allies Faraone found - aside from the unexpected support of Tiedeberg's

Eye of the beholder

Handcuffed, shackled and subdued, Faraone was led to the elevator. A nurse checked him for injuries, then the officers took him to a confinement cell on the eighth floor. John Tiedeberg, the federal court liaison, joined them in the elevator. Appointed in the wake of a lawsuit to make sure inmates are treated properly, Tiedeberg says he wanted to see how the officers handled an inmate in handcuffs and shackles. Under oath, Deputies Neilly and Richardt said Faraone screamed, threatened and struggled during the entire trip to the lockdown cell. "He was threatening us the whole way," Neilly said, according to an Oct. 17 deposition taken at the public defender's office. "He was telling myself, Deputy Richardt and Deputy Martin, `You don't know who I am. I got deputies fired before and I'll get you all fired, too.' " "So [Tiedeberg] got to hear a lot of this, too?" Ivashuk asked Neilly at the deposition. "Yes," Neilly replied. Richardt agreed. But Tiedeberg says he didn't see any struggling or hear any threats. "Nope. That's not true," Tiedeberg said last Thursday when told of the deputies' statements. "They had two fellas holding him ... He wasn't struggling. There was no cursing or anything. Everything was quiet because they knew I'd be watching them." He told Ivashuk the same thing at an Oct. 17 deposition. "Did he resist at all in your presence?" Ivashuk said. "No," Tiedeberg said. "Did he say anything at all in your presence?" Ivashuk continued. "No," Tiedeberg replied. "Neither did the deputies." Ivashuk says the discrepancies prove the deputies made an obvious effort to exaggerate Faraone's behavior on June 4. "You know why it's all different?" Ivashuk says of the deputies' statements. "Because it didn't happen." Case closed None of the deputies involved in this case could be reached for comment. But they make it clear in their statements to Ivashuk that they think Faraone was out to get them, not vice versa. "Well, if I must say, from my understanding he said to me that day that he got deputies fired before," Neilly told Ivashuk. "I assume that he goes around starting things, from what he says. He probably goes around starting stuff to get deputies fired. That's my belief because he kepx saying, `You don't know who I am,' which I don't know if [the other deputies] did. I didn't ... So why keep bringing it up?" Corrections Director Susan McCampbell says while she is familiar with Faraone because of his history at the jail, she had not heard of his most recent charges against her officers. "He has made no allegations that would trigger an investigation," she says. "If there is any indication at all that the deputies filed false statements, that's an area that would need to be investigated." Now that the case is closed, Finkelstein says an investigation is highly unlikely. "The police never have and never will police themselves," he says. "That's the way the system works. The response of the government is not, `Oh we're sorry, let us prosecute the perjurers and wrongdoers,' instead they offer a deal that is too good to refuse."