Miami-Dade

Law enforcement

The Miami Beach cop and the meth dealers: a tawdry tale

 

When officer George Navarro Jr.’s drug-dealer pals got busted, they started talking to authorities about Navarro. Now he may be in a lot of trouble.

dovalle@MiamiHerald.com

That same month, Mayoli and Navarro traveled by plane to Nassau, where they arranged a deal to buy two kilos of cocaine for $30,000, plus transport seven more to Miami, the investigative documents say. The drugs were to be stored in a cooler with a fake bottom.

One month later, Mayoli and Navarro — packing an AR15 rifle, two pistols and a bulletproof vest — returned to the Bahamas by boat to consummate the deal, the reports say.

However, their boat’s propeller hit shore rocks, forcing the pair to pay for repairs. That left them short of the amount needed to complete the deal.

Empty-handed again

Mayoli said they agreed instead to smuggle five Dominicans to Miami for extra cash. But even that fell through. With a storm gathering, the boat captain left the islands abruptly as Navarro and Mayoli brushed their teeth in a cabin. Again, they came away empty-handed.

Band said the trip to the Bahamas was nothing more than a failed stab at reselling American-bought clothing on the island. “Mayoli has a vivid imagination,” he said.

The probe into the Bahamas trip also ensnared U.S. Coast Guard boatswain’s mate Robert Sarduy Jr., another Navarro pal. According to an agent’s report, investigators discovered he gave Navarro “specific details of the locations of U.S. Coast Guard cutters … entering U.S. waters from the Bahamas.”

Whether Sarduy is still on duty could not be determined. The Coast Guard is investigating, agency spokeswoman Marilyn Fajardo said.

In interviews with law officers, included in the hundreds of pages released by the Miami-Dade state attorney’s office, Mayoli and Guedes related other stories of alleged wrongdoing:

• After Guedes’ arrest in March 2011, Mayoli claimed he and Navarro went to a Biscayne Boulevard storage unit and destroyed the contents of Guedes’ meth lab.

• In December 2010, Mayoli and Navarro burglarized a suspected West Miami-Dade marijuana grow house. Their only haul: an Apple Mac Pro, several watches and three Louis Vuitton bags.

• In late 2010, Mayoli, Guedes and Navarro went to a Miami condo to collect a drug debt for Guedes. Navarro angrily berated two bewildered Spanish-speaking women before realizing they had visited the wrong apartment. A year later, Miami-Dade Detective John Loyal and Miami Beach Sgt. Osvaldo Ramos flew to Puerto Rico and interviewed one of the women, who corroborated the story, according to documents.

• Navarro and Miami Beach Officer Grant Reid had a falling out after Navarro allegedly had a drunken tryst with Reid’s girlfriend. Mayoli said that Navarro, inebriated and stewing, aimed his gun at a carload of “gang members” and pulled the trigger. The clip was empty because Mayoli had removed the bullets.

The probe also generated an ongoing investigation into Reid, whose now ex-girlfriend, Miami Officer Stephanie Rodriguez, told cops that Reid forged her signature to cash checks in her name. Rodriguez later text-messaged a detective that “she was having second thoughts about pursuing the allegations.”

• Mayoli claimed that in 2009, an officer — whose name is redacted from reports — accepted several vials of steroids and $2,500 in cash as a payoff in exchange for not arresting Guedes. Mayoli also claimed that, after he was ticketed for driving a Lamborghini recklessly in upstate Florida, an unnamed female prosecutor called a counterpart in Central Florida to get the charge dropped. The prosecutor was dating a Miami Beach cop.

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