Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo is certainly taking advantage of the unfortunate incident that landed the mayor’s spokesman and city’s communication director in jail on charges of transmitting pornography to aminor.
But he’s also throwing rocks from a glass house. Boulders.
Because while he’s going around saying that the mayor let Rene Pedrosa amend his application later to include two DUI arrest he had originally omitted, 
using the incident to question the mayor’s integrity and judgement, he’s got a chief of staff with a sexual predilection of his own.
Jose A. Suarez, who actually ran against Carollo in 2017, has a 1998 arrest for soliciting prostitution after he approached an undercover police officer on Eighth Street and 31st Avenue and offered her “$40 for everything.” Cheapskate. For some reason, he was driving a red car with Georgia plates, even though he lived at the same Little Havana address he listed on his candidate paperwork. Miami-Dade Clerk of courts records show Suarez completed pre-trial intervention and got a nolle pros from the system.
Read related: Joe Carollo vs Francis Suarez continues; Miami mayor says he’ll back recall
Did he put his arrest on his city application? Ladra doesn’t know. I asked to review his file, and others, more than a week ago and have been cancelled on by the official records custodian twice. Not even sure if I have any confidence anymore that the documents have not been altered. But Suarez has been promoted several times so he’s had several opportunities to cop to the arrest on those applications.
If Carollo says it doesn’t matter because Suarez was never convicted, just know that wouldn’t fly with him if it was the mayor’s chief of staff.
Maybe Carollo just let it slide. If he claims ignorance, just know that Carollo did opposition research for Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez. He knows how to background people. Ladra wouldn’t be surprised if he had dossiers at home on a lot of unsuspecting people.
Especially on Suarez, who was actually a candidate against him in the 2017 race. Suarez, who was a spokesman for the 1199 SEIU at the time, raised just $16,350, according to his campaign reports — a lot came from labor sources — and came in 6th with 5% of the vote. Now Ladra wonders if he was a plantidate to take votes away from someone else, but not a good one because he only got 295 votes. Then he goes to work for Carollo?
Read related: The Joe Carollo crisis management media tour is a joke, insult to Cubans
And who in the world is doing the vetting at the city of Miami? Don’t they background check employees?
Anyway, if Carollo can say the mayor had a pedophile in his office, and he says it as often as he can, then we can say that Carollo has someone who dabbles in sex trafficking leading his staff. Who knows how many other times Suarez has hired prostitutes that weren’t undercover cops? Who knows how many times those prostitutes were underage girls? Who knows if Carollo ever trolled with him?
We don’t. But we can speculate all we want, because that is what Carollo does.
Joe Carollo’s own chief of staff has prostitution arrest in his past added by Ladra on
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