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“After 35 years sitting behind a desk, I want to sit behind a desk as much as I want to get teeth pulled,” he said. “I’m going to have to work midnights in the south end. I’m going to work ten times harder than anyone else. I’m going to take a substantial pay cut to protect the community where my grandfather lived since 1917.
“Why shouldn’t I get this opportunity?”
Las malas lenguas say the deal was sealed last year when Levine was running for mayor. He would get Tobin’s support and, in turn, Tobin — who had already tried and failed to put his own boy in the police chief’s job — would help Levine restructure the top of the police department. Then Tobin could land softly when he is termed out next year — there’s no way he would run against Levine and he has little chance of going on to county or state office — with a coveted job at the police department and build on his existing retirement benefits. And without having to wait in line or go through any of the hoops that us mere humans do.
Maybe that is why Tobin has been so entremetido on police business.
Tobin has played a larger role than other commissioners in the recent musical 
chairs at the Miami Beach Police Department. In the 2012 search for a new police chief, Tobin pushed for pal Thomas Hunker , former police chief in Bal Harbour, which — what a coincidence — is the agency that sponsored the commissioner’s enrollment in the police academy. Why doesn’t Bal Harbour hire him? Sources contend that Tobin pushed hard for Hunker so that Hunker would hire him as an assistant chief or something — even though he’s never worked a day as a police officer in his life.
Tobin voted against Assistant Chief Ray Martinez , who was ultimately made chief but left to lead the security team for the Ultra Music Festival. And he voted against Assistant Chief Mark Overton, who left the city after just a short year to be the chief of Bal Harbour, where Hunker was. Hmmmm. Anyway, in effect, Tobin helped Levine clear the way to appoint Chief Dan Oats, whose claim to fame was being the police chief during the movie theater massacre in Aurora, CO, and who is considered a lackey that is not won much love among the rank and file in the department since he was hired about three months ago.
Read related story: Philip Levine has power trip with Miami Beach Police
Funny how the mayor hasn’t asked the chief to open a new investigation 
into the alleged police abuse complaint — which was really his own abuse of power that should have been investigated — that Levine filed after he was refused re-entry with his pal, lobbyist Chris Korge, into a South Beach Art Basel party thrown by fellow millionaire Thomas Kramer. You know why he won’t investigate it? Because the evidence points to the fact that his boss instigated the confrontation with a police officer and then filed a false police report.
If Tobin is allowed to become a police officer who, Ladra will dare say it, none of the others in the rank and file will roll the welcome mat out for, then Levine will have yet another lackey on the force to retaliate against his political enemies and quash investigations into his own abuses.
The waiver needs a super majority vote, or five of seven on the dais, to pass. One would think that at least Commissioner Micky Steinberg would vote against the waiver. Her husband, former State Rep. Richard “Sext Me” Steinberg was the one who created the two-year rule ordinance after former Commissioner Jose Smith was made city attorney and some people complained that he had an in (of course he had an in).
But with two other commissioners waiting in the wings for plush positions of their own, and nary an opposition movement in sight, this seems like a done deal.
Ladra just hopes that whatever public corruption investigators we have left go to the meeting Wednesday.
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