A Miami-Dade police officer has been arrested after authorities said he fondled two teenage girls during a traffic stop in West Kendall.

Juan Carlos Rodriguez, 24, was charged late Thursday with two counts of lewd and lascivious molestation. He appeared in Miami-Dade bond court Friday.

Rodriguez, an officer of about four years, has been relieved of duty without pay, said Miami-Dade police spokesman Robert Williams. He worked at the Hammocks district station.

According to an arrest warrant, Rodriguez pulled over a car on Southwest 88th Street and 157th Avenue on Jan. 11 at about 10:30 p.m. He fondled the girls, who were passengers in the car, behind a CVS pharmacy.

Miami-Dade sexual battery detectives found that Rodriguez “had assaulted a number of other young women in a similar manner” in the same neighborhood, the warrant said.

“His `searches’ of these young women were not done in accord with police protocol, and served no legitimate police purposes,” Miami-Dade Detective Ricardo Landrian wrote in the warrant.

Rodriguez was still jailed Friday afternoon and had not posted bail.