Miami Beach police have sometimes walked a fine line between serving the public and succumbing to the temptations of patrolling one of the nation's most decadent seaside playgrounds — South Beach, a 23-block stretch that comes alive after dark with wall-to-wall traffic, celebrities and drunken revelers.
In recent years, individual Miami Beach police officers were in the headlines for bashing gays, shooting unarmed citizens, and frolicking with women on YouTube.
Internal affairs complaints and lawsuits allege officers have severely beaten unruly bar patrons, taken advantage of intoxicated women and consumed alcohol on duty. Among the exploits from the department's files and other documents: An officer who, after drinking with his squad, went the wrong way on Interstate 95, crashed head-on into a vehicle; an officer who fondled a handcuffed woman in the back of his cruiser, then asked for her phone number; and an officer accused by a colleague of using cocaine after a police Christmas party.
Bad-boy behavior continues to dog the department — probably never more publicly than last month, when two uniformed Beach police officers spent part of the Fourth of July weekend cozying up with women at a bachelorette party at the Clevelander. Officer Derick Kuilan took the bride-to-be on a predawn joyride on his city-owned ATV— with lights out — and ran over two beachgoers, seriously injuring both. A blood test showed Kuilan was drunk.
In the aftermath, serious questions are being raised about how the two on-duty officers — including one not even in his assigned district — felt comfortable enough to drink and party so publicly. The officers have been fired, but an investigation continues into why one supervisor left early during that shift, another came in late, and why it took five hours to give Kuilan the blood-alcohol test, which he still flunked.
Following the crash, Police Chief Carlos Noriega set new protocols designed to make supervisors and officers more accountable. The chief, who is scheduled to retire in December, insists that he inherited a lax culture, and has successfully brought transparency and professionalism to the force during his five years at the helm.
Detective Gustavo Sanchez, vice president of the city's police union, said the vast majority of the department's officers are hardworking, upstanding men and women who "put their lives on the line day in and day out."
"It's not fair to indict an entire department for what a few officers have done," he said.
If drinking and partying on duty were commonplace among officers, Noriega said he would have heard about it before now.
"This has never, ever surfaced before,'' said the chief.
Noriega's leadership was called into question by Cmdr. George Navarro, who filed a civil lawsuit against the city in 2008, alleging that when Noriega was in charge of the patrol division, he would drink with rank-and-file officers in his office after their shifts ended — even after he was ordered to stop. The suit also said that the city manager received complaints that on-duty officers were "congregating in restaurants and parking lots;'' and that whole squads were abandoning their posts in the middle of the night, leaving parts of the city unprotected.
Navarro, the lead investigator in the 1997 Gianni Versace murder investigation, worked directly for Chief Donald De Lucca, who left in 2007. When Noriega replaced De Lucca, Navarro claimed he was demoted to a lower-pay grade position in retaliation for exposing police misconduct. The suit was eventually settled out of court.
"Not a word of the suit was true,'' Noriega said. "He had absolutely no evidence.''
TOURIST TOWN
Last year, the city had more than 10 million visitors and 13 major events, often leaving a department of some 360 officers to patrol massive crowds on weekends. That meant working a lot of overtime and supplementing an on-duty force with off-duty officers who, through an arrangement with the city, patrol bars and clubs.
Their off-duty work, combined with overtime, has made Beach cops among the highest-paid in the region. Over the years, Jerome Berrian has earned tens of thousands in overtime and off-duty work. He insists it was not that heavy workload that caused him to doze off so soundly in his cruiser that he couldn't hear another officer honking his horn to rouse him.
Berrian, who was supposed to be monitoring traffic at Indian Creek Drive and 41st Street for a boat show the morning of Feb. 20, 2006, said he was ill with food poisoning. He received a written reprimand, and was later promoted to lieutenant.
Internal affairs reports obtained by The Miami Herald, show that it is not unusual for officers to be given a reprimand or suspension, rather than being fired, for infractions.
In 2003, police officer Eduardo Macias admitted drinking in uniform at the South Beach nightclub B.E.D. He was suspended for four days and was back on the street. Three years later, in 2006, he was accused of fondling a woman who was handcuffed in the back seat of his patrol car after a DUI arrest, and two months later, ordering a vodka and cranberry while meeting her in uniform at Mango's nightclub.
The "date" was part of an internal affairs setup, and Macias was arrested and dismissed from the force in 2009. During that time, two videos surfaced showing him drinking and partying in uniform with women at another bar.
28 Aug, 2011--
Source: http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNELebicjIReaDTaVznoR3gdL2bctw&url=http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/mh-miami-beach-cops-20110828,0,617422.story
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