Hearing sets city up for lawsuit on police chief’s wrongful termination
Miami Police Chief Art Acevedo was officially fired Thursday, by unanimous vote, after a five-hour kangaroo hearing in which he chose to remain silent and his lawyer refused to make a case.
Why a kangaroo hearing? Oh, so many reasons.
Attorney John Byrne said the city had failed to follow its own rules and rushed the hearing. The suspension came late Monday and he had five days to prepare his case, which gave him until this coming Monday. But City Attorney Victoria “Tricky Vicky” Mendez had a different interpretation of the city charter. She said the commission has to address the suspension within five days, not after five days.
Byrne said he wasn’t prepared and he turned out to be right. It was obvious throughout the proceeding that he wasn’t prepared. But it also seemed pretty obvious that he wasn’t there to defend the chief from city discipline but rather build the civil case.
Because he was right about one thing: The firing was a foregone conclusion.
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“It was preordained the day he sent the Sept. 24 memo,” Byrne said, referring to the 8-page report to the city manager where Acevedo accuses the Three Amigos — commissioners Joe Carollo, Alex Diaz de la Portilla and Manolo Reyes — of misconduct and abuse of office.
“He was suspended because he has the courage to do what many in our community don’t have the courage to do, speak truth to power,” Byrne said.
The city’s side tried very hard to convince everyone that Acevedo was fired for the eight seemingly legitimate (maybe) reasons in his suspension memo, not the accusations against the electeds.
City Manager Art Noriega was represented by Stephanie Marchman of GrayRobinson, who provided each commissioner and Byrne with a binder with more than 90 pages of documents supporting the chief’s suspension and termination (yes, Ladra asked for it). Marchman then called four witnesses to testify to the eight reasons cited.
Human Resources Director Angela Roberts confirmed that Acevedo had taken 15 days of vacation — including conferences and conventions — without first getting the manager’s approval or even notifying him. The time has been corrected in the Oracle pay system and Acevedo owes the city 40 hours, Roberts said.
“It will be recovered in the next paycheck,” she said. “Not tomorrow. He gets one more paycheck after that.”
Aha! He gets one more paycheck after that. Roberts wouldn’t say that if she didn’t know that Acevedo was getting fired. Byrne caught it and brought it up during cross examination. Roberts tried to back track, saying, well, if things today go a certain way it would be his last paycheck. But there’s no doubt she totally expected things today to go a certain way.
And let’s stop here for a moment to remember that Mayor Francis Suarez — who was not at the hearing — admitted at a press conference earlier this week that the battle with the chief’s relationships with the commission and administration were “untenable” and “unsustainable” and, ultimately, the cause for the chief’s dismissal.
Read related: Miami Mayor Francis Suarez weighs in, agrees on firing Chief Art Acevedo
Byrne also pointed out that the two executive members of the police department who testified — Interim Chief Manuel “Manny” Morales and Assistant Chief Armando Aguilar — want Acevedo’s job. What he didn’t say but las malas lenguas know is that Morales pretty much had it in the bag until Suarez swooped in with Acevedo, his “Tom Brady of police chiefs.”
So, yeah, there might be some hard feelings there.
Morales testified that at a staff meeting Sept. 29 — two days after the first special meeting where Carollo spent hours attacking Acevedo — the chief made several accusatory statements. “This place is full of backstabbers and snakes,” he is quoted about saying.
“He’s talking about us,” Morales said, sounding somewhat hurt.
He said that when Acevedo first came to the department from Houston on April 5, he immediately approached the executive or high ranking officers and asked them to provide three names they would promote and three names they would demote. “We had to do it,” Morales said, adding that the chief then used their own words to cause discord among them.
“He said ‘This is what your peers are saying about you,'” Morales recounted. “It was a tactic to divide and conquer and cause a bit of instability with the executive staff.”
Both he and Aguilar testified to the verbal tirade they say came from the chief’s hand-picked assistant from Houston, Heather Morris, after her position was cut from the city budget by a vengeful commission Oct. 1. Both were careful not to use the same language.
“She said ‘You guys are MF, female dog, female body part,'” Morales said.
Aguilar said he came into the conference room a little late and Morris turned on him asking him “What the F?”
“I was taken aback,” said Aguilar, who might be the only cop Ladra has ever known to be taken aback by the F word. “And Chief Acevedo said something to the effect of, ‘You guys should have done more to save her job.’
“I asked ‘What job? The job I first found out about downstairs?””
Noooo. He’s not bitter.
Both chiefs said Acevedo should have intervened and protected them. Awww. Los pobres. They also said that they wrote much of the action plan that the city manager had asked the chief to write in what was an obvious and apparent trap to find reasons to fire Acevedo with cause.
Because the firing was preordained after the 8-page memo.
Byrne asked Aguilar if he knew the chief’s executive assistant had intentionally failed to input Acevedo’s leave time and provided that information to Commissioner Reyes so that he could give it to Carollo as ammunition. “I had heard rumors to that effect, I had no first hand knowledge,” Aguilar said.
Read related: Inquisition of Miami Police chief continues with steps to have him fired
Mendez objected: “Extreme hearsay. Double hearsay!”
There was also talk about the “Cuban mafia” comment, which Diaz de la Portilla wants us to interpret as Acevedo saying the city of Miami was run by the Cuban mafia, not just the police department. (Could go either way). And, really, Ladra thinks too much has been made of that and that the commissioners are, once again, using the pain of our Cuban viejitos against their enemies.
Noriega was the last witness to testify and said he moved to terminate Acevedo because “it had become clear to me that the chief was no longer capable of managing the department… based on the eight factors.”
The prosecution played two videos, including one of the chief calling some idiot at a street protest a fool. He also said he was doing his “fucking job,” and the commissioners pretend like this is such a big offense. People ought to hear Diaz de la Portilla talk when nobody’s listening. Fuck is tame.
“In my perception, it is actions unbecoming the chief,” Noriega said.
The manager said he made up his mind to fire Acevedo after the chief submitted his action plan. You know, the one Noriega needed to fire him. He said he wanted to give the chief a “platform” to defend himself on. But what he really wanted was a platform the manager could push Acevedo off.
What about the action plan did he object to? The fact that Acevedo gave himself a good grade for the first six months of his job here.
Read related: Miami Police Chief Art Acevedo gets memo from manager = cover for firing
“When I read that, I almost didn’t have to read the rest of it,” Noriega said. “For him not to be self aware… it shows a tremendous disconnect.
“He really engineered his demise.”
Yeah, by writing about the electeds’ misconduct.
Some damage on the chief’s SUV also came out and the manager said Acevedo didn’t report it until 10 days after the pictures were leaked, probably by some backstabber or snake in the police department. He complained about interviews the chief gave in which he said he thought a vaccine mandate was coming, “which was in no way authorized.
“He spoke out of bounds.”
Which is exactly what he would say about the 8-page, Sept. 24 memo.
Carollo really tried to get Acevedo to speak. At one point, it seemed he almost begged. “You’re in command! You’re in full command. You’re attorney can’t tell you not to speak. I want to hear from you before I vote.”
He and ADLP called him a coward for not defending himself. Russell tried several times to stop them from prosecuting the case and said that Byrne was baiting them for the civil trial that everybody knows is coming. “You are showing your bias,” he said, reminding them that they are judges in the quasi judicial proceeding.
Even though Diaz de la Portilla agreed about the legal case, he still couldn’t help but say “I rest my case, too,” or something like that.
No, really. Even Tricky Vicky was trying to stop them. But Carollo just talked over Russell and his gavel. “Commissioner you’re out of order. Commissioner you are out of order… you do not have the floor.”
But Russell was also harsh with Acevedo and his attorney.
“It’s been communicated that this was a waste of time, that the outcome was a given, but when there is no defense given… we can’t defend you unless you defend yourself,” the chairman said.
“The predetermined notion was predetermined on your side.”
Miami commission votes to oust embattled police chief Art Acevedo added by Ladra on
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