At State of County speech, Miami-Dade mayor wears scarf honoring young shooting victim

As she praised a decline in shootings and murders in Miami-Dade during her State of the County address on Monday, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava included a reminder of a victim of chronic gun violence.

Wrapped around her neck for the televised speech was a scarf given to the mayor by the family of Chassidy Saunders, 6, killed a year ago in a drive-by shooting in Miami’s Model City neighborhood.

“I’m wearing this beautiful scarf today in honor of the children whose lives have been taken by senseless acts of gun violence in this community,” she said.

Gun violence was one of three crises Levine Cava has identified as defining her first year as Miami-Dade County’s top administrator, along with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium tower in Surfside. Levine Cava took office in November 2020 after six years as a county commissioner.

Monday’s online address from the county’s Greynolds Park celebrated her administration’s response on all three fronts.

On COVID, she pointed out that Miami-Dade leads Florida on vaccination rates and maintained its network of testing sites as infections waned in the fall, only to find them in high demand again as the omicron variant hit. “We never let down our guard,” she said.

With the county’s fire and police chiefs reporting to her, Levine Cava oversaw Miami-Dade’s response to the June 24 collapse of the 12-story Surfside condo tower, which killed 98 people. “From the very beginning, we put the families — those who lost loved ones and those who lost homes — at the center of every decision we made,” she said.

Last week, a Miami-Dade Circuit Court judge chastised the Levine Cava administration for agreeing to a federal agency’s demand to block legal teams for victims’ families from accessing a county evidence site with rubble from the Champlain Towers site.

Judge Michael Hanzman said he was “somewhat shocked” that the National Institute of Standards and Technology would claim exclusive access to the evidence, even as victims’ families pursue their own discovery process through a civil suit.

He ordered the county, NIST, plaintiffs and the receiver representing the Champlain condo association to reach an agreement allowing access before he is forced to intervene.

Levine Cava did not mention the controversy in her speech, but addressed it during a press conference. “We’re here to follow the instructions of the court — the courts,” she said. “Really, it’s out of our hands.”

Miami-Dade’s charter requires the mayor to deliver a “report on the state of the county” by Jan. 31 each year. Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, the event was usually open to the public and drew an audience of local elected officeholders, county department heads and lobbyists.

For the second year, Levine Cava shifted her address to an online event. Only three of the 13 commissioners attended the outdoor filming at Greynolds Park, and each of them was assigned a speaking role: Vice Chairman Olivert Gilbert, Chairman Jose “Pepe” Diaz, and the commissioner whose district includes Greynolds Park in North Miami Beach, Sally Heyman.

Levine Cava’s speech touched on themes in her 2020 campaign: promises for more affordable housing, expanded transit, efforts to weather sea-level rise and more high-paying jobs.

She opened the address with a recap of three crises county government faced in 2021.

“Along with the pandemic and the Surfside tragedy, we were facing yet another crisis: the national gun violence epidemic, which came to a head in our community last summer,” she said.

With police statistics showing shootings have declined, Levine Cava praised results from the county’s “Peace and Prosperity Plan,” which directed an extra $10 million to enforcement and youth summer programs through 2022.

“We acted swiftly to stem the tide of violence and keep residents safe — by tackling root causes and building safer, more stable neighborhoods,” Levine Cava said.

Levine Cava’s mention of Chassidy Saunders was a last-minute addition to her address, and does not appear in the prepared edition her office released during the speech.

The 6-year-old, a kindergartner at Beacon College Prep Elementary in Opa-locka, was shot while her family left a child’s birthday party on Jan. 16, 2021. Two adults were shot as well.

Asked about the scarf at a press conference, Levine Cava said she attended the girl’s funeral and received the memorial scarf from the family. The murder off Northwest 54th Street and Sixth Place remains unsolved.

“The scarf was actually a present from the grandmother of Chassidy Saunders,” she said while holding out the purple-tinted scarf with a photo of a smiling Chassidy and her birth and death dates. “It was another tragedy that can be and must be avoided.”

This story was originally published January 31, 2022 at 4:06 PM.