A lenient sentence for former AFL star Wayne Carey is demoralising for the Miami police force, the city's police union says.
The retired AFL champion walked out of the Miami-Dade County courthouse a free man this week, despite admitting to elbowing one police officer in the face and kicking another in the mouth during a brawl in his Miami Beach hotel suite a year ago.
Sergeant John Rivera, president of the Dade County Police Benevolent Association (PBA), said assaulting police was one of "the gravest of offences one can do".
"It is very demoralising for the men and women who risk their lives on a daily basis to know there is not a system that backs them up," Sgt Rivera told AAP.
"Whether you say you were drunk or not coherent, it doesn't excuse the fact you attack the final authority, the most important authority and the one that separates lawlessness from lawfulness."
Rivera blamed south Florida's "weak judicial system" and the willingness of prosecutors to cut deals with defendants for the leniency shown to Carey.
Rivera, whose union represents 6,500 law enforcement officers, said Carey was lucky he committed the police assaults in Miami.
"In other parts of Florida, he'd be getting jail," Rivera said.
"For a first time offence, he'd get six months jail."
Carey pleaded guilty to two felony counts of battery on a law enforcement officer and one of resisting an officer.
The charges had a maximum sentence of 15 years in a US prison.
The police officers went to Carey's suite in the Mandarin-Oriental Hotel on October 27 last year after a report he smashed a wine glass in the face of his girlfriend, Kate Neilson.
Carey resisted arrest and in the melee he inflicted facial injuries on two officers.
However, under a plea deal arranged by Carey's high-priced Miami lawyer, Richard Sharpstein, and prosecutors, Carey avoided jail.
He was sentenced to 50 hours community service, alcohol and anger management counselling, two years probation and ordered to write letters of apology to the officers involved.
If Carey stays out of trouble in the US for the two years of his probation, his US criminal history will be scrubbed clean.
Carey, 37, also agreed to donate $US500 ($A768.76) to the PBA's Love Fund, a charity to help local police in "catastrophic situations".
The fund helps to pay for funerals of officers killed on duty or for wheelchairs and medical help for police and family members.
"The way we look at it, $500 is better than nothing," Rivera said.
"$500 will go a long way to helping families in need.
"We'd prefer $5,000, but we take what little bit we can get."
