KFHA forum for Miami-Dade sheriff candidates helps narrow down the field

Observations from outside the clown car

And then there were six. Five? Four? Three?

The forum of sheriff candidates hosted by the Kendall Federation of Homeowners Associations Monday may have helped narrow the field some — more by those who don’t know what they’re talking about as by those who seem to.

Let’s cross some wannabes off the list, already. Sorry, but that’s the name of the game here. Don’t get your bulletproof panties in a bunch.

We’ll start with Alexander Fornet, who took Ladra’s advice and just skipped the Zoom forum altogether. Fornet was a police officer for five minutes before he opened up a credit clinic. Thank you for saving us time, Alex.

Next, let’s say goodbye (for now) to Susan Khoury, the onetime county commission candidate (she lost to Anthony Rodriguez in 2022) who sued the county for wrongful arrest after she was Baker Acted for taking video outside a school in 2017 and won a $520,000 judgement in 2022. Reform, reform, reform. That is all she talked about. Nothing about safety or crime prevention.

Kudos to her for being the only one who raised the issue of the suicide attempt by former Miami-Dade Police Director Freddy Ramirez and she made a lot of sense when she said the county needs to respond better to mental health calls — she should know? — for the community and for its officers. She also said that sworn officers should not be responding to non emergency calls like a dog barking. But it appears she thinks she is still running for commissioner. And she probably will again.

She called into the forum from her car. Political Cortadito’s Room Rater gives her a 2/10 just because the framing wasn’t terrible and you can see a blinking light in the background through the window.

John Barrow, head of MDPD’s Personnel Management Bureau and former major at the Hammocks station, said he understands what it is to be a victim, having grown up in Carol City, which is now called Miami Gardens. He stammered a lot, especially when talking about the “back office functions,” and seemed to state the obvious about speeding. “There are certain cities that you drive through that you don’t speed.” No kidding. Next.

Ruamen de la Rua says he has the most experience in a sheriff’s office, but he worked in the Marion County Sheriff’s office, where the population is 375,908, and half of that is retired cops in Ocala. He was too keen on wanting to “bring back our faith into our community and into our sheriff’s office.” Huh? What faith would that be? Next.

Rickey Mitchell should go into radio. Or maybe read audible books. That is one smooth voice. Mitchell is really a funeral home owner and director, which Ladra says is a conflict of interest with the sheriff’s position. He proved as much when he told KFHA President Michael Rosenberg that people should have guns at home. “You’re safer to have a gun in your house. Yes, you are,” Mitchell said, almost licking his lips. One would expect him to announce a two for one special at the funeral home after that. Next.

Ernesto Rodriguez is currently with the department’s Agricultural and Environmental Crimes unit. He takes his job to heart, as one can see with the multiple photographs of horses hanging on his wall. Political Cortadito’s Room Rater gives him a 5/10. He pooh-poohed bike patrol officers and took pride in being a member of the original “jump out boys,” the notorious, scandal-prone undercover narcotics unit that was disbanded in the 1990s, whose crew members have been accused of planting evidence, falsifying arrest reports and stealing money from drug dealers. Next.

John Rivera is a nice guy. No, really. He’s not the hothead he used to be. He’s mellowed with age. But he’s still a union boss. He can’t help it. He spent more time as president of the Police Benevolent Association than he did as an officer on the street or a detective in investigations — or both combined. He’s more accustomed to protecting the men and women in blue and green than the residents and property owners. He might have a bunch of political endorsements, but they are that: political. Next.

Jeffrey Giordano is the comic relief that this race needs. But the 27-year veteran of the Miami Police Department disappointed when he came dressed more like Gino the caporegime from Brooklyn than “Gino the Magnificent,” his clairvoyant alter ego ala Johnny Carson.

He wins the Room Rater competition, cheating with two good entries. One had a skyline and some armed thugs in the background. The other had a poster of a Sherlock Holmes movie.

Giordano rambled on about artificial intelligence, violating the rights of people on probation and bringing the pledge of allegiance and prayer back to roll call. Rosenberg asked how that would help solve more than the 25% of robberies that are currently solved. “I’m more concerned about that than if we do the pledge of allegiance at roll call,” he said. Thank you. Next.

James Reyes, our current Director of Public Safety, is going to be the Democrat nominee on the November ballot. That is certain. But he should not be elected. This Broward transplant has been handpicked by Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and her consultant Christian Ulvert after their first choice tried to kill himself, which is the only thing that makes someone unelectable in the 305.

It’s not so much that his entire career has been spent in corrections — and residents are not inmates — as much as the fact that he is in no way going to be independent. Which is what we voted for in 2018 when an amendment brought this constitutional office back.

He didn’t say much that was memorable or different from anyone else. “We need to start from a blank slate.” And Ladra wonders if he was talking about his mind. Next.

Jose Aragu is not really in the running, but Ladra is glad he is in the race giving the big names a run for their money. He says the midwest district that he leads has the best crime reduction rates in the county. And that is something. And he was the only one to challenge the governor’s law that allows Floridians to carry concealed weapons without a permit.

But his platform is too focused on school safety. It’s true that there are not enough officers at the Miami-Dade Public Schools Police department to cover all the schools. He also wants to restart programs like D.A.R.E. and others to be more proactive.

“Most of our gun violence in Miami-Dade County today is being committed by juveniles between 14 and 17 years of age,” Aragu said, adding that these kids take these guns to schools. “It’s something that we routinely don’t talk about.”

He also talked about the proliferation of scooters and said that “traffic enforcement needs to be at the forefront.” But he knew his audience.

So, the Republican primary really comes down to four or five candidates. And that’s only because former (arrested then suspended) Miami-Dade Commissioner Joe Martinez threw his hat in at the very last minute. He was his old curmudgeon self at the forum, almost peeved that he has to even run for this office, which apparently should have just been handed to him. Sigh. Eye roll.

“Being a police officer is not what I do, it’s who I am,” said Martinez, who was elected to commissioner five times, so he’s also a politician. He said his tenure on the county dais will give him an edge.

“It’s important because these first few years from an appointed director to an elected sheriff is extremely critical,” Martinez said, adding that he is best equipped to negotiate the terms of the office between the election in November and its establishment in January. “It’s important to have that knowledge and know how to handle the beast,” he said of County Hall.

Martinez called in after his trial on public corruption charges — for taking money in exchange for proposing legislation — was delayed for the umpteenth time. He says its intentional to keep him from this office. And it is going to be difficult to run for the top law enforcement position in the county while defending himself from charges of unlawful compensation.

“I will tell you I’m innocent,” he said, almost angry that someone dared ask how the charges could affect the race. “It hasn’t affected it. There’s nothing there. It hasn’t affected my campaign.”

He seemed to be calling from a museum with an iron staircase and a chandelier. Room rater gives him a 3/10.

The entry of Martinez into this race is going to hurt the other politician, Joe Sanchez, the most. They are going to split the Bay of Pigs veterans vote, which will only help the three frontrunners, in Ladra’s book: Ignacio “Iggy” Alvarez, Rosanna “Rosie” Cordero-Stutz and Mario Knapp, who should go by “Mayito” for consistency.

Knapp, who looks impressively like Amazon king Jeff Bezos said some right things. But then he said some wrong things, like being in favor of automatic speeding tickets from traffic cameras, which seems a little intrusive. And he kind of hedged when asked if he would follow orders from a Republican governor if the orders were something he was uncomfortable with.

But he is in the running because — and this is the thing Ladra likes the most about him — we’ve never heard of him before this race. That’s something in this environment.

Sanchez, who we have heard too much of, said he has been in law enforcement for 37 years, using the qualifier “off and on” for the first time, probably because Ladra had already asked him about the misinformation a few days earlier (more on that later), since he took an 11-year leave of absence to serve as a Miami city commissioner.

The FHP trooper, on leave again for this campaign, seemed a bit sedated, like he had taken one too many Xanax for the forum.

“Being able to balance a budget is incredible,” he said, sounding a little like a Deadhead at a concert. But did he really? At the city of Miami, where he was a commissioner for 11 years, it’s the city manager that balances the budget, no?

Sanchez also says that he hired and fired people — as chairman of the Bayfront Park Trust, not as commissioner, because that would be a charter violation. But he also said that administrative and clerical duties should be handled by non sworn personnel, a recurring theme among all the candidates, by the way, nothing unique.

They also all said that before hiring more police officers, which seemed like a gimme question, they would have to review and “asses” current positions and how they were distributed. Okay, sure, of course. But they also need more officers, especially considering that the force hasn’t grown by much in 15 years while the population has soared.

The only veteran in the race, as he likes to say, Sanchez would recruit former military to join the force in certain roles and start an auxiliary program “to get citizens out to help us fight crime.”

Really? This is the solution? Vets and Crime Watch?

Both he and Reyes said that their biggest challenges had been hurricanes. Say what? They are not running for emergency management director.

Rosanna Cordero-Stutz, the current assistant director at MDPD and the only viable woman in the race, got the most heat when a KFHA board member asked her to defend her endorsement last April from Donald Trump, who was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in New York.

“I, as a law enforcement person, have a lot of concerns,” about the trial, she said. She should be more concerned about the charges, but she is going for GOP votes, after all.

Cordero-Stutz, who also said she moved to Broward because she could not find an affordable home in Miami-Dade but that she is looking for one now, said it was important that she has spent her entire career in Miami-Dade and that she is best equipped to reassess the current department and lead the transition.

She thinks her biggest competition is Sanchez. But after Monday night, Ladra believes the real competition here is between her and Alvarez.

The attorney, who left the MDPD after 25 years, made a lot of sense when he talked about his experience in both the law enforcement, the law, and business, as founder and head of an 14-member firm in Coral Gables. And he doesn’t owe anybody any favors. That might be why he has the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police, the largest police union in the state.

“I’m not doing this to be a politician,” Alvarez said. “This is the first time our community is going to elect a sheriff in 60 years and we need to get this right,” he said, adding that it sets us up for the future. One thing he would likely do is cut administrative positions.

“Why do we have five assistant directors and eight division chiefs,” he asked. “Why does it take hours and hours for cops to come?”

Alvarez said he is not using this as his next step in politics. He runs a successful business and just wants to set up the sheriff’s office for success. “This is going to be a very complex transition.”

KFHA forum for Miami-Dade sheriff candidates helps narrow down the field added by Ladra on June 25, 2024
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