Questions surround strange arrest of CJ Gimenez for 'battery' in Coral Gables

Updated: The son of Congressman Carlos Gimenez was released from jail late Thursday morning, posting $1,500 bond for a battery charge after slapping a Miami city commissioner at a Coral Gables restaurant almost 24 hours earlier.

But there are a lot of questions about the atypical arrest of CJ Gimenez in an incident that the Gables police chief called “unremarkable” and the “victim” himself, Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla, said was a “flick of his wrist.”

Did the sergeant-at-arms, Det. Stanley Paul-Noel — the same one who was driving ADLP when he crashed a city car in January — have the jurisdiction to arrest Gimenez? Did he step out of bounds? Wouldn’t anybody in that same predicament be given a “promise to appear”-in-court form to sign and be let go on their own recognizance?

Why did CJ Gimenez, an epileptic 44-year-old father of two who is probably not a danger to the public (unless he’s lobbying), have to spend the night in jail? Was that intentional?

Sources say that interim Miami Police Chief Manny Morales — who gave The Dean a big bear hug when he was appointed chief — wanted to have Gimenez transported to the city of Miami for arrest and that Gables Police Chief Ed Hudak refused.

“Absolutely not. That’s not the case,” Hudak told Ladra. He said he talked to Morales but there was no pressure and it was always a Gables case.

At the press conference (!) Wednesday, Hudak said the sergeant-at-arms would be writing the affidavit and making the arrest. That seemed strange to Ladra. Unprecedented, even. But because the Gables system is electronic, Hudak said Thursday, a Gables officer wrote the arrest report and included a first-person narrative from Paul-Noel, who was hired in 2011 and makes $38.50 an hour to hang out with ADLP.

Curiously, Paul-Noel is not named in the affidavit. But he writes that CJ Gimenez “approached the victim from behind as he was having lunch and said, ‘Hey, pussy. Do you remember me?’ and struck the victim on the side of the head with an open hand. As the sergeant-at-arms on the detail, I immediately made contact with the defendant and identified myself as a City of Miami Police officer.

“I then directed the defendant to stop and identify himself,” the narrative goes on, even though Ladra is 99.9% certain both former Miami Commissioner Humberto Hernandez and lobbyist Carlos Lago — Gables Mayor Vince Lago‘s brother, who the commissioner was having lunch with — knew who it was.

And ADLP does, indeed, remember.

Arrest affidavit for Carlos J. “CJ” Gimenez on battery charges Feb. 9, 2022 by Political Cortadito on Scribd

“The defendant refused and attempted to get away from me. I held onto the defendant by his coat and instructed him to calm down and stop resisting,” the arrest affidavit reads (still being narrated by Paul-Noel). “The defendant stated, ‘You’re a city of Miami police officer. You don’t have jurisdiction here.’ The defendant continued to resist until city of Coral Gables officers arrived on the scene and assisted the sergeant at arms in placing the defendant under arrest.”

Coral Gables Police Det. Jimmy McKee said he reviewed the statements from several witnesses and the video from closed circuit surveillance cameras near the Morton’s, at 2333 Ponce de Leon Blvd. “The battery occurred spontaneously and in the presence of a city of Miami sergeant-at-arms and needed an exigent response by Coral Gables Police in order to assist,” McKee wrote.

Really? Because didn’t witnesses say CJ Gimenez was trying to get away?

None of the witnesses are listed on the report. And there were plenty. Hudak said they were interviewed, but their statements have not been made public yet. The closed circuit video footage that police already reviewed has also not been released.

The video is real important. Because one source who was there at the time told Ladra that the commissioner may have also grabbed Gimenez in an “unwanted” fashion, which is all simple battery is. Gimenez did start it, he said. CJ struck first. But the commissioner grabbed him by the coat and yelled in his face. Only after Gimenez got out of his grip and moved to the sidewalk did the sergeant-at-arms get involved.

Was it at the commissioner’s behest?

We won’t know for sure until we see the video.

Another loyal Political Cortadito reader told Ladra he just happened to be driving by the restaurant — stopped at the light to cross Ponce de Leon — when the incident happened about 2:10 p.m. He didn’t see the slap heard around Miami, but he did hear the officer identify himself and scuffle with Gimenez.

“They were wrestling for a while. Both standing up and on the ground for a bit,” the reader said, adding that Paul-Noel wanted CJ to sit down so he could show him his ID, the reader said. CJ “kept trying to squirm away from him.”

Nobody is saying that Gimenez acted appropriately. He’s a hothead with impulse control issues who is known to lash out publicly at critics and enemies. Ladra was the target of his verbal battery at another restaurant many years ago. And he and ADLP had a falling out years ago — either after the latter got himself and CJ’s wife arrested for trespassing when Diaz de la Portilla refused to leave a hotel or stop chain-smoking inside, or after he was elected to the city of Miami and CJ didn’t get an inside track. Who cares?

Either way, Gimenez may have needed closure.

But he definitely should have been given a PTA and forced to go to court. And it could be fun to watch CJ do community hours picking up trash along the expressways he once wanted to control at MDX.

In his defense, however, anyone who spends five minutes with Diaz de la Portilla wants to punch him in the face. The Dean brazenly flouts the law, doesn’t live in his district, abuses his office for kickbacks and with ghost employees and just has no ethical barometer whatsoever.

He also could have diffused the situation easily. Wouldn’t that have been the stately, correct thing to do? Did the incident have to escalate to an arrest and a night in jail? That is the question. It’s not like Miami Police aren’t known for needlessly escalating matters. Ladra keeps thinking this could have gone horribly wrong if the officer had pulled his weapon. Shudder.

Instead, ADLP doubled down on Thursday. “This is a criminal investigation of Mr. Gimenez and his actions and I don’t want to jeopardize the prosecutor’s case in any way,” he said in a statement to the Miami Herald after dodging journalists all day at City Hall for the commission meeting.

He doesn’t want to jeopardize the prosecutor’s case? Ha! More likely he doesn’t want to be asked why he let this happen. Or why he was meeting with Lago, who is lobbying the city on a number of zoning and land use issues, and Hernandez, who las malas lenguas say is his bagman. Or who paid for lunch. The taxpayers? The lobbyist? Did anyone have the $62 filet mignon and lobster tail? Did the sergeant-at-arms get a bite to eat, too? Or did he bring a sandwich?

A day earlier, The Dean, who is not camera shy, was harsher with his words — and, by the way, already jeopardized the prosecution: “As is the custom of this individual, he tried in a cowardly manner to provoke me, and like a little girl, he brushed my hair with his fingernails. Men do it from the front, and not from behind,” he tweeted in Spanish. Stronger than the English one.

Brushing someone’s hair with fingertips doesn’t seem like battery worthy of a night in jail. Is ADLP embarrassed to say he was bitch slapped in public by CJ Gimenez?

Both Hudak and McKee, in his report, say that Paul-Noel acted within his rights because of the mutual aid agreement the cities signed in 2018 (it’s good through 2023). But not everyone agrees. Former State Rep. and attorney-to-the-pols J.C. Planas said he read the agreement.

“Misdemeanor batteries are not covered,” Planas said. “I have never seen a case of an open hand slap to the back of the head result in a night in jail. Ever! Doesn’t happen.

“The issue here is why this arrest happened in the first place.”

According to Florida state law and subsequent legal opinions, a mutual aid agreement “allows one municipality to provide assistance to another municipality on a specified, limited basis.”

Key words: Specified and limited.

The mutual aid agreement makes cites a lot of examples of when assistance can be either requested or offered, neither of which happened here. Some of those include:

Joint multi-jurisdictional criminal investigations
Civil affray or disobedience, disturbances, riots, large protests or demonstrations and assemblies, controversial trials, political conventions, labor disputes, and strikes.
Any natural, technological or manmade disaster
Incidents which require rescue operations and crowd/traffic control
Large-scale evacuations, aircraft and shipping disasters, fires, explosions, gas line leaks, radiological incidents, train wrecks and derailments, chemical or hazardous waste spills and electrical power failures.
Terrorist activities including, but not limited to, acts of sabotage
Escapes from or disturbances within prisoner processing facilities
Hostage and barricades subject situations
Aircraft piracy
Control of major crime scenes, area searches, perimeter control, back-ups to emergency and in-progress calls, pursuits and missing persons
Enemy attacks
Transportation of evidence requiring security
Major events, e.g., sporting events, concerts, parades, fairs, festivals, and
conventions.
Security and escort duties for dignitaries
Incidents requiring utilization of specialized units such as underwater recovery, marine patrol, aircraft, canine, motorcycle, mounted, SWAT, bomb squad, crime scene and police information
Emergency situations in which one agency cannot perform its functional objective
Joint training in areas of mutual need
Joint multi-jurisdictional marine interdiction operations
Off-duty special events
DUI checkpoints

Sure, the vague and general language says “not limited to” before the list. But this arrest seems at the very least to violate the spirit of the agreement.

Gables Police, Planas said, should have responded like it would to any “ear flick” incident: They didn’t see the battery, so they charge the accused, write a PTA or “promise to appear” in court form and let the State Attorney’s Office sort it out. There was no injury.

“There is no authority to arrest on a misdemeanor battery without an injury,” Planas said. “I can’t think of a single case where an open hand slap led to a night in jail. You need fists and blood for that.”

Maybe next time.

Meanwhile, here’s the mutual aid agreement. A cortadito for whoever can point to the provision or criteria that fits this scenario.

Mutual Aid Agreement between cities of Miami and Coral Gables (2018-2023) by Political Cortadito on Scribd

Alex Diaz de la Portilla, Chief Manny Morales, CJ Gimenez, Coral Gables Police

Questions surround strange arrest of CJ Gimenez for ‘battery’ in Coral Gables added by Ladra on February 10, 2022
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