New Year’s Eve drive-thru arrest is latest legal problem for NMB zoning board chairman
Over the decades, Larry J. Thompson has been arrested over a dozen times — once for shaking down businesses for cash while posing as a city inspector in Opa-locka.
Early on New Year’s Day, North Miami Beach police say, he became so angry and impatient at a McDonald’s drive-thru that he tried to cut the line and threatened other drivers.
“I am a police officer, and I could do whatever I want,” he yelled, according to an arrest report.
He is not a police officer. He is a convenience store clerk, according to the report. But less than three weeks after the episode, North Miami Beach city officials honored Thompson with a new post: chairman of a board that has the power to shape billion-dollar developments across the city.
Thompson, 56, now holds the top position on the Planning and Zoning Board, a volunteer body that vets and recommends projects that shape the city’s future, like the controversial Intracoastal Mall redevelopment approved last year.
His pending criminal case for the McDonald’s episode — and his previous conviction in a public corruption case — are now raising questions about whether Thompson was properly vetted and qualified to hold the zoning position.
North Miami Beach Mayor Anthony DeFillipo told the Miami Herald he knew nothing about Thompson’s criminal history, including the public corruption case in Opa-locka.
“This is all first news to me,” he said.
The city clerk and city attorney didn’t respond to an inquiry from the Herald about the vetting process for city boards. But Pamela Latimore, the city clerk from 2011 to 2019, said criminal background checks aren’t part of the process. Instead, the city requests copies of applicants’ voter registrations and driver’s licenses to ensure they meet residency requirements.
“The eight years that I was there, no one did a criminal check” for those applicants, Latimore said.
McDonald’s drive-thru arrest
It was after 1 a.m. on Jan. 1 and Thompson was getting impatient in a McDonald’s drive-thru line on Northeast 163rd Street.
First, police say, Thompson cut in front of one car with his white Chevrolet pickup. Then, he blared his horn at the person ordering food in front of him, prompting the driver and Thompson to get out of their cars and exchange words.
Police say Thompson then threatened to shoot the other people in line, although officers didn’t find any guns when they arrived to arrest Thompson for simple assault and searched his car.
“He jumped out of his car, said, ‘I’m a cop, I’ve got a gun, I’ve got a right to skip,’ and said he was gonna shoot everybody,” Tierra Jackson, 30, told the Herald.
Jackson said Thompson cut in front of her car before threatening to shoot her. “He was scaring everybody when he kept saying he had a gun,” she said. “I was like, is he an officer for real or just to skip the line?”
The Miami-Dade state attorney’s office is still investigating the incident and deciding whether to pursue charges, a spokesman said.
Thompson did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story. The Herald also tried contacting Thompson through an acquaintance, who said Thompson was aware of the requests but did not wish to comment.
Ten days after Thompson’s arrest, the Planning and Zoning Board voted unanimously to make him the new chairman, a step up from his previous role as vice chair.
“It’s humbling, and I look forward to working with you in an open and fair and honest way,” Thompson said after the vote.
On Jan. 19, the city commission voted to reappoint Thompson to the board for a new two-year term. Daniela Jean, a recently elected city commissioner who recommended Thompson’s appointment, told the Herald she wasn’t aware of his recent arrest. Thompson had asked her if she would support him, she said, and she agreed after city officials told her he was eligible and “in good standing.”
“I don’t know how forthright he was with that information, so that’s a concern,” Jean said of the arrest.
DeFillipo said he also didn’t learn about Thompson’s arrest until after the vote. Thompson, a longtime resident of the city’s Washington Park neighborhood, was a paid canvasser for DeFillipo’s reelection campaign last November and has done work for his previous campaigns.
In 2015, DeFillipo, then a city commissioner, picked Thompson to receive a “Citizens’ Appreciation” award. DeFillipo said recently that Thompson has participated in local food drives and volunteered his time and equipment to help pressure clean seniors’ homes. Before his first appointment to the Planning and Zoning Board in 2015, Thompson served on the city’s economic development commission, code enforcement board and a charter review commission.
“He’s very much been a community person,” DeFillipo said.
Still, the mayor said, “it’s concerning to me to have somebody appointed to a board who has any record.” DeFillipo has publicly called for William Dean, an attorney charged with extortion in November, to step down from the North Miami Beach Public Utilities Commission.
Dean and Thompson, he said, should each “step down until their case is settled.”
Thompson posed as building inspector
The incident at McDonald’s wasn’t Thompson’s first brush with law enforcement.
In 2019, records show, Thompson was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol. It’s not clear from court records how the case was resolved.
In 2005, Thompson was charged with battery in a domestic violence case and pleaded no contest, meaning he accepted a conviction but didn’t admit guilt. Thompson was placed on probation and ordered to stay away from the alleged victim.
Most directly relevant to his role as a public official: In 1996, Thompson was charged with posing as a code inspector in Opa-locka. Prosecutors said that, over several months, he demanded money in exchange for leniency at a series of small businesses, even though he wasn’t any sort of inspector.
“Business owners stated that he showed up saying he was an inspector,” former Miami-Dade prosecutor Carolyn Epstein said at the time. “He would ask them for money. A couple of times, the real inspector would come after Thompson, and the business owners would say, ‘What are you doing here?’ ”
Prosecutors didn’t pursue initial charges of bribery, extortion and official misconduct, but Thompson was ultimately convicted of three felony counts of unlawful compensation for official behavior and five misdemeanor counts of posing as a building inspector, according to court records. He received two years of probation and was later sentenced to 10 months in jail for violating his probation terms, records show.
Weeks after his 1996 arrest for the building inspector scheme, Thompson was separately charged with forgery and swearing a false election oath while running for Opa-locka City Commission. The charges were dropped, but a judge struck Thompson’s name from the ballot because he couldn’t produce a key to the apartment where he claimed to be living.
“It was the strangest hearing that you have ever seen in your life,” former Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections David Leahy said at the time.
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On past application forms for the Planning and Zoning Board, Thompson has acknowledged that he has previously been convicted of a felony. He is eligible to vote, according to county records, meaning he meets city requirements for board members to be electors in North Miami Beach.
But there’s no indication in meeting minutes or footage that city officials ever discussed the details of Thompson’s past convictions or their implications for his role on the board.
At a December 2018 meeting, two commissioners raised questions about Thompson’s nomination for a new term on the Planning and Zoning Board and voted against him, citing concerns about his professional qualifications. Thompson said in his application that he has a high school degree and worked as a construction superintendent about a decade earlier.
Planning and Zoning Board members should have “qualifications of an architect or maybe a developer,” said then-commissioner Phyllis Smith. “The intent of that board is to bring in professionals that are in that field currently,” she said.
The city clerk and attorney said that, under the city code, Thompson was qualified for the position. Board members, the code says, “shall have a license in engineering or contracting, or have equivalent professional experience” in one of several fields including construction management.
Thompson isn’t the only board member with limited professional experience in planning and zoning. Robert Dempster, who was appointed this month, said on his application that he’s qualified because he has a Bachelor’s degree in economics, one of the areas of expertise listed in the city code. Other board members include a real estate broker, an associate attorney and a roofing contractor.
This story was originally published January 30, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
