Ralph Rosado says Miami Police Chief Manny Morales will run against him

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Is this the work of the ghost of Joe Carollo?

What was supposed to be a sleepy, bureaucratic conversation about succession planning at City of Miami on Thursday detonated faster than a cafetera left unattended.

Commissioner Miguel Angel Gabela thought he was teeing up a routine discussion about the process for replacing retiring Police Chief Manuel Morales, who is cued to leave the city’s employ in October, according to his deferred retirement option plan. Instead, Commissioner Ralph Rosado grabbed the mic and, with Morales at the podium, conducted a live cross-examination, accusing the chief of announcing plans to run against him and using his public persona and a nearly half-million-dollar public safety salary as a political launchpad.

But first, Rosado had to bring up the chief’s role in the “Ball and Chain fiasco” — the targeted code enforcement and police harassment of two Little Havana businessmen who dared support Carollo’s opponent, later sued in federal court and won a $63.5 million First Amendment violation settlement. Rosado asked the city attorney how much the city had spent on the legal fight that has followed and George Wysong said about $6 million, $4 mil of which is covered by insurance.

So the city is only on the hook for $2 million. Only.

“And during that whole fiasco, how central was Morales to the entire thing,” Rosado asked. Wysong said not much. Morales was assistant chief at the time but is widely suspected of colluding with former Commissioner Joe Carollo to harass and intimidate the owners of the watering hole property.

Wysong warned Rosado that he was wading into dangerous territory because the plaintiffs in that case filed a new motion or something this week “based on comments by elected officials in this case trying to impugn those comments as admission of liability.” We’ll have to come back to that later.

“I would respectfully ask you not call it a fiasco,” Wysong told Rosado.

“I would say the public would consider it a very public fiasco that we’ve all read about and is costing us a lot of money,” Rosado shot back.

Commission Chair Christine King, who loves to remind everyone she is the only attorney on the dais, interrupted them in the same frustrated way a mom tries to stop two kids from fighting in the back seat.

“I don’t think this is the appropriate forum,” she said, calling it “political rhetoric and opinion rather than fact.

“The city attorney just cautioned you and us about it, ’cause this is ongoing litigation.

“I don’t pretend to know all the facts,” King said, reminding everyone that she was elected after the “Ball and Chain fiasco,” as it will now be called forever on this website. “But I still please would ask you to take the advice of our city attorney and ask those questions at our attorney client session.”

But that was just the appetizer. The buffet was still coming.

“As I understand it, ’cause I’ve heard this now from a number of individuals both within your department, other departments, civilians etcetera, one of the things you’re looking at doing once you’re done with your retirement — which could be in October, but I think should probably be much sooner than that quite frankly — is that you’re thinking of campaigning for public office. Um, are you?”

He said he had heard it from “at least a dozen individuals” — unrelated individuals — who told the commissioner that Morales himself said he would be running for the D4 seat. “Which puts me in a really uncomfortable position because were are paying you essentially half a million dollars a year to be campaigning on the job,” he said, referencing recent social media posts and events.

“I don’t know what kind of trust I can have in you at all for you to continue in this role. Certainly I’m not willing to work with you all the way to October, or even much sooner than that, quite frankly Rosado said. “I find it dishonest to say that you are being approached when you are telling people out in the community that you are running for this seat.

“And I welcome that. We live in democracy,” Rosado said. “But you can’t be working for the city and be doing that.”

Suddenly, this wasn’t about a transition plan anymore. Old shades of the former city commission come into view. This was about ambition, paranoia — and maybe a familiar puppet master pulling strings from the wings.

Las malas lenguas are already whispering the name Carollo, who — let’s be honest — has never exactly embraced retirement as a lifestyle choice. If revenge were cardio, Carollo would be in great shape.

The theory making the rounds is that Crazy Joe is still furious with Rosado and is quietly prodding Morales to jump into the 2027 District 4 race just to make Rosado sweat through his guayabera. After all, Carollo still has more than $2.7 million sitting in his political action committee, Miami First, according to the latest campaign finance reports. Ladra would be surprised if he didn’t run candidates against Commissioners Gabela and Damian Pardo, too.

Petty? Maybe. On brand? Totally.

And Rosado knows how helpful Carollo can be in a campaign. Remember when the former commissioner scripted and directed Rosado’s TV ad and Pinky lied about it? That’s why it was hard to swallow his righteous indignation about trust at the dais Thursday.

Read related: Bromance break-up at Miami City Hall as Joe Carollo and Ralph Rosado split

Morales didn’t take the bait.

Yes, community members have approached him, he said. People who “would love to see me continue my public service after I’m done in uniform,” he said, like he’s practiced the line. No, he has “absolutely no plans right now to pursue that any time soon.” Key words: Right now. Because he definitely refused to rule it out completely.

Gabela, ticked off about an apparent campaign event that the chief had in his district without telling him — a “breakfast with the chief” at a park shared with D4 — wanted Morales to promise not to campaign if he was still going to be the chief. “My district is not going to be used that way if you guys are going to campaign against each other,” Gabela said, insisting, along with  Commissioner Rolando Escalona, that the transition process begin right away.

Then, he basically asked him to promise not to run. The chief wouldn’t. That kind of promise is unenforceable anyway.

“I don’t think this is the place to question or make a statement on someone’s constitutional right to run for office,” said Commission Chair King.

Said Gabela: “I have to tell my people whether I have a police chief or a police chief-slash-politician.”

All the commisioner could get was a pledge of a heads-up if there is another event in D1. Commissioners treat their districts like abuelas treat their kitchens — you don’t just walk in and start cooking without permission. Gabela even brought out a 2019 resolution passed by the late Manolo Reyes that requires city staffers to notify commissioners about events in their districts.

Showing the resolution on his phone, Commissioner Escalona — who is surprisingly and refreshingly ballsy (more on that later) — agreed that the electeds should be notified of those kinds of events in their districts. Even if it’s just a “coffee with cop” PR stunt. He pulled out his cellphone with the resolution that Gabela mentioned on it for dramatic effect.

Rosado framed the “breakfast with the chief” as a campaign event. And he’s not wrong. An Instagram video from the that day shows Morales with a crowd of mostly elderly votes, ahem, residents, talking about low crime rates and how accessible he is. It’s certainly looks like a slick campaign video.

Ironically, Morales thanked Gabela for “opening his doors.” Except nobody told Gabela about any doors.

Disrespect? Miscommunication? Early retail politics? You decide.

After the meeting, Morales told the Miami Herald, the paper of record, that he didn’t want to completely rule out a possible future run for office. “Especially if I’m unemployed in six months. I might need a job,” he is quoted as saying. At the meeting, he also said that there was no reason he couldn’t stay on past October.

And here Ladra had heard that Morales wanted to be the police chief in Coral Gables after Chief Ed Hudak retires.

It’s nice to have options.

Commissioner Rosado wants him out asap, and even floated demoting Morales and appointing an interim chief immediately and begin the process to find a new chief. He made a motion to direct the city manager to do just that. It was met with crickets. Not a single colleague backed him with a second.

That kind of silence in Miami politics is louder than reggaeton blasting out the sunroof of a Nissan Maxima speeding on I-95 at dusk with purple lights glowing and reflecting off the street underneath.

City Manager James Reyes stepped in to warn commissioners not to torch the city’s recruitment process over rumors. “Something as important as the choice of a police chief, something as important as honoring over 25 years of service to this community… all of you have now said that you have an expectation for me to find a credible, valuable candidate. The message can’t be though, to those candidates that based on hearsay you would be removed in the city of Miami.

“That is not the way you should operate, ” Reyes said. “Hearsay should not result in the termination of over a 30 year career in public service.

He said that if there are policy violations made, he expects a complaint and will conduct a proper investigation.

And he drew a bright red, or maybe yellow, line: Campaign on city time and you’re fired. Any director, any chief, any department. “If there is an iota of evidence,” that is.

Read related: Miami Mayor Eileen Higgins names James Reyes warden, er, city manager

Reyes told Gabela that the practice of meeting with the community was common all around the county and was not necessarily political. He must not have seen the Instagram video. Also, most of these neighborhood chats are with district commanders or majors, not the chief. Ladra would like to ask how many he’s had before. How many has he posted on Instagram?

Gabela did not buy it. “We’re not the county. And I’m not stupid,” he told Reyes in the first sign that it may not be smooth sailing for the manager after all. Gabela said Morales was either the chief or a candidate. Period. “We can’t have both.”

The chief insists the event was apolitical and denies campaigning. But refusing to shut the door entirely on a future run is exactly the kind of oxygen political gossip feeds on. Because if you were definitely not running, wouldn’t you just say it?

Miami has seen this movie before. Today it’s “community encouragement.” Tomorrow it’s an exploratory committee and Vote Morales yard signs.

Meanwhile, lost in the theatrics was Reyes’ quiet reveal: the administration already has a transition timeline, with recruitment expected to begin about three months before Morales retires in October. In other words, the train is already leaving the station, and commissioners are not only not driving, they ain’t on it. Reyes made it clear that he and Mayor Eileen Higgins had talked about transition early on, before he was hired even, and that they were on it.

Higgins confirmed that she and Reyes had discussed it. “One of the most important decisions that we would be making as a city government is the transition to a new chief,” Higgins said. “And that transition will happen and it will be smooth.”

It sounded like they both said “Nothing to see here!” Translation: Stay in your lane, commissioners.

Which, judging by Thursday’s performance, might be a blessing.

But this is unlikely to end here. Rosado has said he may file a formal complaint. Will anyone produce actual evidence of Morales campaigning? So far: puro chisme. Rosado, as usual, did not return calls and texts to his phone. Will the chief lean into the speculation — or finally shut it down?

And, perhaps most intriguingly, is Carollo out there, in Shangri-La, smiling?

Final thought: If Morales runs after retiring, he has every right. If he campaigns while still chief, that’s a firing offense and, in Ladra’s opinion, theft of taxpayer dollars. But what we witnessed Thursday felt less like ethics enforcement and more like a pre-emptive political strike and the same weaponization of government as always, but this time for electoral warfare.

And if this is only February energy for a 2027 race 19 months into the future, we should start to brace for it now.

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  Chief Manny Morales, Ralph Rosado