Miami-Dade mayor shakes up public safety leadership again, with focus on jail reforms

For the second time this year, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava shuffled the senior leadership overseeing the police, fire department and other public safety operations.

In a memo released Wednesday, Levine Cava said the county’s former police director will return to his old job while also overseeing Miami-Dade’s Fire Rescue Department. The current police director will move to a senior position in the Corrections Department, part of Levine Cava’s effort to ensure “accountability” in a jail system still under federal court supervision for past mistreatment.

The changes come five months after Levine Cava announced her first shuffle of leadership overseeing public safety operations, including the transfer of the county’s five-year director of the Corrections Department, Daniel Junior, for a new post at PortMiami.

The latest changes announced are:

• Alfredo “Freddy” Ramirez III returns as police director. Levine Cava kept Ramirez as police director when she took office in 2020. In February, she promoted Ramirez to a deputy position in the mayor’s office, overseeing police and fire. Now he’s still overseeing both departments with a new title — chief of safety and emergency response — in addition to being director of the police department.
• George Perez is the current police director who replaced Ramirez in February. Perez is taking a senior position overseeing police operations at Corrections as assistant director. Since 2013, Corrections has been under federal court order requiring monitoring of the jails after findings of mistreatment of inmates needing mental-health services.
• J.D. Patterson, who retired as police director in 2015, was one of Levine Cava’s first hires in 2020, in the newly created position of chief public safety officer. That was the job Ramirez took in February when Levine Cava named Patterson to a temporary position overseeing Corrections during the shake-up at that agency that included a new director, Cassandra Jones. On Wednesday, Levine Cava announced a new permanent title for Patterson: chief of Corrections and Forensics. He will continue overseeing the Corrections Department which has 3,000 employees, as well as the Medical Examiner’s Office which has a staff of 90.

Levine Cava didn’t include an explanation for the timing of the reorganization, but the release announcing the changes emphasized the need for oversight in Corrections.

The release said Perez’s new assignment will be to “ensure transparency and accountability within Corrections” and that Patterson’s recent post had him “advance critical reforms to our correctional facilities.”

This story was originally published July 6, 2022 at 6:18 PM.