Miami, this is how you oust a police chief. Take a lesson from Hialeah’s new mayor | Editorial

Getting rid of a police chief doesn’t have to be a circus. And yes, we’re talking to you, Miami commissioners.

Hialeah Mayor Esteban “Steve” Bovo was sworn in on Friday and, by Monday, he was showing Police Chief Sergio Velázquez the door, putting him on leave and announcing the start of a search for a new chief.

There were plenty of reasons to replace Velázquez: A long-running scandal that led to the arrest by the FBI of one of his police officers, charged with sexually assaulting a handful of teenage girls and young women while on duty. Allegations against Velázquez himself — leveled by a Hialeah businessman and investigated by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement — that the chief torched the man’s truck parked in front of his home. A long history of misconduct allegations and disciplinary infractions during his time on the Hialeah force, where he has worked since the early 1990s, according to internal affairs documents obtained by the Miami Herald.

Investigations and allegations

In 2002, Velázquez, a sergeant at the time, asked for the phone number of a woman being detained for driving under the influence. He found her an attorney, paid $1,000 in legal fees, visited a Santeria reader with her to consult about her case and went to her arraignment in civilian clothes. In other words, he helped her fight a case that his own department had brought. When the woman’s arrest paperwork disappeared from the station, the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office couldn’t prove tampering, though they investigated.

In 2005, Velázquez — by now a probationary lieutenant — was in trouble again, this time for allegedly trumping up battery and cocaine charges in a domestic dispute, records show. Then-Mayor Raúl Martínez demoted him down to sergeant, at the chief’s recommendation. Martínez now says not firing Velázquez was one of his greatest regrets. He called the chief “an embarrassment to the city.”

But it wasn’t until Bovo replaced Mayor Carlos Hernández, a former police officer who was close to Velázquez, that the years of drama finally, mercifully, came to an end. The Hialeah Fraternal Order of Police called the decision a “much-needed change.”

It’s clear that Velázquez, who was about to enter the city’s deferred retirement option plan, had to go. Bovo had even campaigned on that point. “I am not a believer in sitting there and procrastinating on it,” Bovo told the Herald.

How not to hire a chief

But now the process to hire begins, and that has big pitfalls of its own. We only need to look at the disastrous hiring and then firing, six months later, of Miami Police Chief Art Acevedo to see just how badly it can go. It was only last month that Miami city commissioners, led by Commissioner Joe Carollo, spent days discussing what they perceived to be Acevedo’s shortcomings — which ranged from a “Cuban mafia” comment to his appearance in “tight pants” on a video shot at a dance fundraiser — before finally lowering the boom. And it was all live on the internet, a national embarrassment for a city striving to become the next tech hub.

Acevedo was Miami Mayor Francis Suarez’s hand-picked choice, someone he called “America’s best chief” when he hired him. But Suarez ignored the work of a Miami search committee that had narrowed the field to eight candidates for the job. He and the city manager hired Acevedo in secrecy.

Bovo has said he would put together a search committee for a statewide hunt for the next chief. That seems like the right start. He expects it to take no longer than four months. He said he is “envisioning a new era in our city.” We certainly hope so. Hialeah, after suffering with Velázquez, deserves nothing less.