UPDATED: A Coral Gables Police major has been suspended with pay while Internal Affairs investigates an incident Wednesday in which she was caught allegedly spying on a 
resident at a commission meeting at City Hall.
And Political Cortadito has learned that the State Attorney’s Office may also be looking into it.
Maj. Theresa Molina, who served as acting chief for a short while in 2014, allegedly even took cellphone photos of text messages that Maria Cruz was sending commissioners in which she was asking to speak on an issue they were discussing.
After Cruz spoke about the 30-some police vacancies and her dissatisfaction with the city’s fix — a program where civilian employees and security guards patrol North Gables in fancy golf carts as “eyes and ears” of real police officers — she told Molina to stop watching her.
“Stop texting the commissioners,” Molina shot back, within earshot of everyone in the room.
Watch the Coral Gables City Commission yourself here
It was so loud that City Attorney Craig Leen heard Molina at the other end of the commission chambers and told the resident “You are allowed to text commissioners. Let’s be clear about that,” he said. Commissioner Vince Lago interrupted him and blasted Molina, saying that residents could text or call him whenever they wanted. He then proceeded to give his phone number at the public and recorded meeting.
“This is a problem. I wasn’t going to say anything because… Maria texted me. She texted me,” Lago said. “Now we have a problem. Now we have a big problem. Because the issue here is I take great pride in that resident calls me, writes me a text message, writes me an email… but I have a concern when the resident comes up to me at the intermission, while we’re in a moment when we are celebrating something spectacular in the city, and the tell me that while they were texting me they were being watched by a police officer.
“If you want to text me while I’m on the dais, it’s very simple,” he said and then read out his phone number. “Call me. Text me… That’s my job. My job is to interact with every single employee and every single resident in this community and business owner. And I will never stop doing that.”
“I never, never thought I would be in Cuba again,” Maria Cruz told Ladra Friday. “I have never heard that in this country people have to be afraid to speak.”
Cruz said she had gone to the commission meeting to speak against the city’s new Neighborhood Safety Aide 
program, which is basically a bandaid that uses civilians in go-carts to cover the 30-some vacancies in the department and cut into an alleged spike in home and auto burglaries perceived by residents in North Gables (more on that later), including 14 car break-ins over Labor Day weekend. The city has also hired security guards to patrol the area at night.
When she was told she was not going to be able to speak, Cruz started texting commissioners. “Please, please, I need to speak on this. Get me recognized,” is what she texted, she told Ladra. That’s when she got two mysterious texts back from an unrecognized number.
“Maria, stop texting,” said the first.
Then, “Ojos,” which literally means eyes, but is a Spanish translation for “someone’s watching.”
Later, there was a break while commissioners went downstairs and outside to the street level to see the fancy go-carts, which Cruz calls the Mickey Mouse cars. She said someone else from the audience told her that Molina was keeping an eye on her and had possibly taken a picture of whatever she was texting.
So back in commission chambers, she started her two minutes with that bit of Big Sister news.
“This morning, I felt like I was back in Cuba,” she told them. “I was texting someone — actually, I was texting you people — and I found a police major was keeping track of what I was texting.
“Am I under surveillance here? Do I need a security company to protect me? This is not Cuba, Mr. Cason.”
Read related story: Gables police shake-up makes new manager top cop
Two days later, Cruz told me she was still shaken.
“If a high ranking officer in your police department is willing to do this,” Molina asks, “what happens when one of her people that I have offended finds me on my way home late at night and stops me for some made up reason?
“It’s scary.”
It’s also unacceptable, said Commissioner Vince Lago, whose family was imprisoned in Cuba under Fidel Castro’s rule.
“I don’t stand for that BS,” Lago told Ladra Friday. “What happened 
at that meeting was completely contrary to what our city stands for and how we treat our citizens.”
The commissioner is completely taken with the idea of the safety aides, who he calls city ambassadors. They are not only another set of eyes and ears for the police he said. They patrol only by day, while residents are at work and are supposed to take packages left at homes and leave notes for the residents so they can claim them later. They are supposed to help residents with the groceries if it’s raining. He also said the security guards, hired overnight when a majority of the break-ins happen, have already had a positive impact reducing nighttime car burglaries.
But that did not excuse Molina’s actions, he added.
“Major Molina’s behavior was completely unacceptable. It paints the city in a bad light,” Lago said.
Ariel Fernandez, an active citizen who ran for commission in 2015 and has sent letters to the commissioners about burglaries to his home and on his street, said he saw Molina keeping tabs on Cruz.
“I did see Molina holding her phone up over Maria like someone would to take a picture,” Fernandez told Ladra. “Anytime Maria moved forward, you know how people move when they are sitting and texting, Molina would move forward. When Maria moved back, Molina would move back.”
Read related story: Gables attorney: ‘There can only be one police chief’
He said that when the commission broke to look at the golf carts, Molina stepped aside to speak briefly with 
Assistant City Manager Frank Fernandez, who City Manager Cathy Swanson-Rivenbark brought to the City Beautiful with her from Hollywood and who has been the bane of the police department’s existence and the citizens of North Gables since.
It was Fernandez’s idea to bring in the nighttime FPI security guards, which may be the same guards he hired in Hollywood, where Swanson-Rivenbark got in trouble for filling too many positions with temporary contractual workers. A Broward inspector general’s report blasted the then Hollywood city manager over spending close to $1 million on temporary employees when all she was allowed to spend without city commission approval was $50,000.
Most of the temps placed by the agency contracted in Hollywood were in the police department.
Some Gables police officers and firefighters — as well as residents — are worried that the same thing is happening all over again in Coral Gables, where Fernandez has apparently changed the criteria for applicants so that it is nearly impossible to fill the vacancies. Among the more drastic requirements: no more than five moving violations in a lifetime and 10 letters of reference.
“If you are leaving your department, you don’t want to tell anybody until you have a job somewhere else,” said one police officer who said there have been less than a dozen hires since Fernandez came on board — which is less than half the officers hired by Chief Ed Hudak the year before.
Hudak started the IA investigation into Molina’s actions before the meeting Wednesday ended. On Friday, he declined to comment pending the outcome.
Meanwhile, the city blew through its overtime budget for the year back in May.
And another officer left the department Thursday.
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