Opa-locka chief fired after review finds department in disarray, officers lack training
Less than three months after an outside agency review determined Opa-locka police lacked even the ability to respond to residents in a “professional manner” and after half its sworn officers called morale within the department “terrible,” one of the city’s longest-serving police chiefs has been fired.
James Dobson, who took over an already-troubled agency in 2014 after stints with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Florida Highway Patrol and Doral Police, was let go early Friday by City Manager John Pate, who said Dobson was terminated because of the city’s high crime rate and a lack of progress in the agency in the months following the May report.
“When our residents voted for change, one of their main concerns was public safety,” Opa-locka Mayor Matthew Pigatt said in a statement released by the city. “This new commission took that into consideration when we recruited a former chief of police as our current city manager.”
Dobson couldn’t be reached for comment.
Pigatt didn’t immediately name a new chief of police and said the city would look outside South Florida to replace Dobson. Opa-locka police employ 54 sworn officers and 10 civilians.
“Now we have the opportunity to conduct a national search for a police chief who will consider the latest research on police reform, accountability, and community policing to enact evidence-based strategies to protect, serve and reduce crime in the city of Opa-locka,” the mayor said.
In 2019, Opa-locka had one of the highest crime rates of any city in South Florida. According to records gathered by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the city of only 16,000 people had 11 homicides. Only the cities of Miami and Miami Gardens and unincorporated Miami-Dade had more murders, though those areas have much larger populations and much lower crime rates when adjusted to population.
And the city has been so unstable financially that its purse strings have been controlled by a state-appointed oversight board since former Gov. Rick Scott declared a state of financial emergency in 2016. The city of 16,000 mostly African American residents in Central Miami-Dade County has been so financially strapped the past decade that many of its streets are almost impassable and littered with potholes and the city has even had trouble keeping sewage from flooding its streets.
At the end of May, Pate released a blistering 36-page review conducted by Miami-Dade Police Capt. George Perera. The captain determined that Opa-locka police were not properly trained or evaluated, that department policies hadn’t been updated in six years and don’t meet basic standards and that evidence was stored in individual lockers that lacked basic security measures.
Perera wrote that though the department “may seem to point to a police organization that is beyond repair,” hope remained because staff realized change was needed.
On Friday, Pate said under Dobson’s command, change didn’t come fast enough.
This story was originally published August 14, 2020 at 12:22 PM.
