NOV 2021 Blues Vol 37 No. 11

a nearly $1 million settlement
in a lawsuit with the California
Highway Patrol over that incident,
saying that he was the victim of
a retaliation campaign aimed at
discrediting him.
Art Acevedo during his tenure
as Houston police chief
Still, scrutiny of Chief Acevedo’s
past was news to many in Miami.
City Manager Noriega admitted
to the commission that he did not
perform a full vetting of Acevedo
before bringing him on board as
the top cop.
“Did we do an in-depth vetting
of him? No,” Noriega said.
Noriega said he mostly took the
word of Houston Mayor Sylvester
Turner that Acevedo was good for
the job upon hiring him.
However, using the chief’s past
against him now in Miami is not
proper, said Piquero, the criminologist.
“Most of that material was
available for people to see. If they
chose not to look for it, the onus
is on them for not looking for it,
not on the chief,” said Piquero.
Eyes On the Commission?
The other main factor at play
for the chief’s future in Miami is
the accusations of misconduct he
lobbied against the three Cuban
American commissioners.
In particular, Acevedo wrote in
his memo sent before the commission
meetings that commissioners
Carollo and Diaz De La
Portilla had pressured police to
conduct code enforcement investigations
into businesses in one
another’s districts.
Similar allegations are not new.
The owners of the Little Havana
bar Ball & Chain have long
charged that Carollo has directed
code enforcement against the
business for political reasons,
charges that Carollo denies. The
popular bar has been closed for
business due to the ongoing enforcement
actions.
On the heels of the Acevedo
memo, Ball & Chain and another
Little Havana restaurant filed
a $28 million federal lawsuit
against the city of Miami, alleging
that the city has “weaponized
the very tools of government” for
political reasons.
The lawsuit cited the Acevedo
memo as corroboration.
But Miami’s city manager said
the police chief has not provided
evidence to support his claims of
misconduct. The targeted commissioners
categorically deny
any truth to the allegations in the
memo or the lawsuit.
The Missing Mayor
Commissioners voted last week
to create an investigative body
that would look into all the allegations
of misconduct, which
would be overseen by the commission
itself. The investigation
would look into any potential
misconduct by the police chief,
the sitting commissioners, or any
other city of Miami employee involved
in the ongoing dispute.
The commission took a vote to
cut some funding to senior staff
members, which were expanded
by Acevedo, and to use that funding
to hire new patrol officers.
They cut funding for the deputy
police chief — the position occupied
by Acevedo’s former Houston
colleague Heather Morris — from
the city budget.
Two City Hall sources told
WLRN the chief is unlikely to last
much longer in the position. Publicly
accusing three sitting commissioners
of misconduct and
inviting a federal investigation
was one step too far for him to
walk back from, they said.
Noticeably absent for the intrigue?
Miami Mayor Francis
Suarez. He attended neither of the
commission meetings, despite
personally recruiting the police
chief to the position. The mayor
recently said he places full faith
in the city manager, who would
technically be the one to retain or
fire the chief, but he has otherwise
stopped commenting on the
drama.
When he was brought on
board, Suarez referred to Acevedo
as the “Michael Jordan of
police chiefs.” He told WLRN in
mid-September that he still supported
the police chief.
“In a city as complex as Miami
can be, there are all kinds of subplots
— some that are public and
some that are not completely —
that motivate some of the things
that we see,” he said at the time.
“I support the chief and I also
support the commission’s desire
to create accountability at that
position, and we’ll all see how it
plays out.”
Daniel Rivero is a reporter and producer
for WLRN, covering Latino and
criminal justice issues. Before joining
the team, he was an investigative
reporter and producer on the television
series “The Naked Truth,” and a
digital reporter for Fusion.
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