Feds should investigate Miami police chief’s allegations of City Hall corruption | Opinion
Update: City Manager Art Noriega suspended Miami Police Chief Art Acevedo on Monday Oct. 11 with the intention of firing him — ending weeks of speculation and tumult at Miami City Hall.
Whether he stays or leaves, embattled Miami Police Chief Art Acevedo already has done the city a great public service.
He has placed center stage — and on paper, in the public record — what so often remains in the shadows, because of political cowardice or because it’s dismissed as comical Miami: the overreach of Miami city commissioners who think they have the right to run the city at their pleasure.
Clearly, it’s power they don’t have.
The job belongs to a professional city manager, according to the City Charter, but Miami has a weak one in Art Noriega, and commissioners greedy for power and the limelight have seized the opportunity to call the shots on Acevedo’s future.
Allegations of corruption
They may win the battle over the chief’s job, but, in the process, commissioners have entered into evidence the serious situation at City Hall. Allegations of corruption by a police chief are no small thing, and a federal investigation with power to subpoena people and paper trail, is what Miami needs.
As we’ve seen during two commission meetings last week, vintage Miami politicians are acting like the city of 455,000+ is a small outpost of a town and they’re mayor, administrator and sheriff wrapped up in one.
Five months into the job, Acevedo had that part of Miami politics figured out, as his blistering eight-page memo about City Hall shenanigans shows.
The likes of Commissioners Joe Carollo, Alex Diaz de la Portilla and Manolo Reyes aren’t supposed to micromanage law enforcement, be it the police department or code enforcement, but they do. People who work for the city, past and present, know it.
On Acevedo’s watch, they’ve pried into confidential internal police investigations, seeking to benefit friends and allies. Likewise, they use code enforcement, police and other city resources to harass perceived enemies, as the owner of the Little Havana club Ball & Chain details in a 66-page, $27 million lawsuit against the city.
Looks like at least some people have had enough of ring leader Carollo and his supporting cast of Diaz de la Portilla and Reyes, stars in the public inquisition of chief Acevedo (two embarrassing meetings down and the threat of at least one more).
The Three Stooges don’t hold a candle to this trio.
Laughable sham
Angry at Acevedo for airing dirty laundry in the memo to Noriega and arch-enemy Mayor Francis Suarez, who recruited the chief, the city commissioners voted to investigate themselves — and preside over the matter. A laughable sham.
The city attorney dutifully agreed to come up with a list of retired law enforcement officers who could serve as investigators, although the cowed look on her face at the meeting said all you need to know: She, too, knows her job is on the line.
As does Noriega, who, instead of remaining quiet, should’ve told commissioners, when asked if the chief shared with him investigations, “No,” plain and simple.
“His answer should have been ‘No, and I don’t need to know,’ ” a former high-ranking member of the Miami Police Department told me. “No, you don’t share investigations about cops. The charter gives that as chief law enforcement officer not to share.”
But it’s clear Noriega is intimidated by commissioners, who do have the power to fire him. He has asked Acevedo for a plan of action that includes how he will mend relations with the commissioners who have horribly disparaged him. Weak.
Acevedo will most likely pay the price of Carollo’s dislike of a nationally renown, big-personality cop sold as “the Michael Jordan of police chiefs.”
If Carollo has shown one thing during his long career, it’s that he can’t stand to be upstaged.
Feds should investigate
The gravity of the situation in Miami calls for an independent investigation by the FBI or the Florida Department of Law Enforcement — but preferably the feds, given the sour state of Florida politics.
A city cannot be run as a quasi-criminal enterprise where politicians — as we’ve seen in these past meetings, openly — take aggressive action against people they perceive as political enemies.
No matter how much political theater they stage, how many videos of a younger Acevedo Carollo and his minions unearth, the truths unraveling aren’t damning to the chief, but his executioners.
Maybe the people of Miami have finally had enough of Carollo & Co.
This story was originally published October 6, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
