Miami Beach adds a city prosecutor, but rejects expanding types of crimes it prosecutes

The Miami Beach commission on Wednesday night agreed to beef up the city’s much criticized municipal prosecution program, but stopped short of dramatically expanding the types of crimes it would handle.

A divided commission rejected a measure that would allow Miami Beach city attorneys to start prosecuting five state misdemeanor crimes normally handled by the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office. Those crimes: battery, trespassing, discharge of a firearm, criminal mischief and indecent exposure.

But four commissioners, including Mayor Dan Gelber, expressed reservation that State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle hadn’t had a chance to weigh in on a plan that could dramatically increase the power — and caseload — of the city’s small municipal prosecution program. She could not immediately be reached for comment.

“I think we should give her that accommodation,” said Gelber, who floated the idea of paying the salaries of state prosecutors who would be assigned only to handle Miami Beach cases.

Commissioner Alex Fernandez worried the city might not be able to handle the influx of cases. Battery cases alone in Miami Beach, the commission heard, numbered some 400 cases last year.

“I don’t know the totality of this. I don’t know that by hiring an extra full-time attorney, and an assistant it’s sufficient to take this on,” Fernandez said.

The move had been sponsored by Miami Beach Commissioner Steven Meiner, who has championed a law-and-order approach to curbing low-level crimes on South Beach, even as other cities across the nation have embraced reforms that call for fewer arrests for minor offenses.

“We’re letting the establishment dictate how we run our city. It’s just a delay game, in my opinion,” Meiner said on Wednesday night as the measure appeared doomed to fail. “Nothing is going to get done. It makes us look weak.”

The commission considered Meiner’s measures, along with several other justice proposals, which had drawn opposition from civil-rights advocates and defense lawyers who believe prosecuting more people for so-called nuisance crimes doesn’t work. The measures were proposed as Miami Beach police officers are being sued over a Memorial Day arrest under a controversial city ordinance.

“Zero tolerance and broken windows policing are failed strategies that do nothing more than reinforce cycles of poverty and criminalization. They do not make us safer, nor will they improve quality of life for residents,” said Alana Greer, the executive director of Miami’s Community Justice Project.

In an interview with the Herald on Tuesday, Meiner defended the measures as important to residents worried about rising crime. “They are demanding police visibility and safer streets and taking control of the crime we’ve seen and experienced,” he said in an interview with the Miami Herald.

Meiner’s past criminal-justice measures have been met with similar criticism.

In May, he co-sponsored an ordinance that made it a crime to stand within 20 feet of officers with the “intent to impede, provoke or harass” after a warning. Over the Memorial Day weekend, Miami Beach police arrested at least 13 people under the ordinance, all of them Black, at least eight of them who were using their cellphones to video record officers.

Two of the cases were immediately dismissed by Miami-Dade prosecutors, who also filed battery charges against officers for allegedly roughing up one of the men. A third case dropped was that of Mariyah Maple, who was pepper sprayed by a police officer and arrested under the law as she video recorded a traffic stop.

The case was ultimately dropped. Maple, last month, filed a federal lawsuit against the three Miami Beach police officers involved in her arrest. She’s claiming wrongful arrest and excessive force was used against her. The suit is pending.

At Meiner’s behest, the commission also approved a plan to appeal all ordinance cases that get dismissed by judges — a move Miami-Dade’s Public Defender said will “add to existing case backlog already clogging the courts.” A review by the Herald also showed the city hadn’t been successful in any of its previous appeals.

This week, Meiner proposed a host of justice measures, including one calling on the Florida Legislature to amend the state constitution to allow for local elected judges, which would allow for judges and jurors who only live in Miami Beach. The commission rejected the resolution on Wednesday night.

“The concepts set forth in these resolutions are wildly misguided and rife with legal and practical impossibilities,” Jude Faccidomo, the president of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said before the meeting. ”Simply put, extreme measures are the act of a desperate government.”

Stephen Hunter Johnson, chair of Miami-Dade County’s Black Affairs Advisory Board, called Meiner’s approach “heavy handed” and said Miami Beach should be treated the same as the rest of the county in meting out justice.

“Unfortunately, there is a lot of political grandstanding to earn the tough-on-crime moniker,” Johnson said, adding: “It seems Mr. Meiner is not content to be part of Miami-Dade County.”

Absent from the public discussion was Fernandez Rundle, whose office did not respond to a request Tuesday for its position on the proposals. On Tuesday, however, the county’s most powerful law enforcement official emailed commissioners asking that the measures be delayed for several weeks.

“I do believe that there are collaborative initiatives that we can undertake that will work quicker and more efficiently than some of the larger more complicated proposals you are suggesting, while still respecting due process rights,” she wrote.

Meiner insisted on taking up the measures anyway.

He was successful in passing a plan that would add one full-time lawyer to work on prosecutions, as well as a legal assistant. The resolution also seeks to allow the Miami Beach prosecutor to refile any ordinance cases that the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office drops. The state sometimes handles those minor charges when they are associated with misdemeanors or felonies.

Also successful: the creation of a “pre-trial diversion” program with Court Options, a nonprofit group that has long worked with the State Attorney’s Office on similar ones. Meiner stressed that the city isn’t seeking jail time for every minor crime. But he believes too many habitual offenders are getting away with breaking the law.

“We have to do more than just make the arrests and release them,” Meiner said.

This story was originally published December 8, 2021 at 6:00 AM.