The emperor has no clothes on! City of South Miami Police Chief Orlando Martinez de Castro is slowly losing his powers over at the city.

In a startling move last night, the City of South Miami city commission voted to relieve embattled police chief Orlando Martinez de Castro of two of his most important duties other than running the police department.  I'm not exactly sure why but up until last night the city's code enforcement office and the city's parking operations were under the command and control of the police chief.  This makes absolutely no sense to me, shouldn't the chief be busy running his police force rather than taking care of matters that really have nothing to do with his intended role?

As we saw several month ago, the police chief used his code enforcement department to illegally detain local handyman Warren Papove with allegations of "working without a permit" until Immigration agents were able to arrive and arrest him for immigration violations that had nothing to do with the alleged code enforcement issue.  We're going to learn a little later another major reason why the chief was in charge of code enforcement, but suffice it to say that he's no longer in charge.  The commission voted 3 to 2 to remove the code enforcement department from the chief's control.  As I understand it, they voted to remove the parking department from the chief's control as well but it has to go to another vote before it's finalized.  Little by little, it seems that the chief is losing his grip on the city, I suspect the next step is going to be the new City Manager showing him the door...

Now, we had an interesting comment on yesterday's post...

Oh this is an easy one.. I try to have the answer before I ask the question with my city. That way it is easier to prove they are lying.. I actually had to vist Ms. Rundle and her Public corruption staff many a time when I found the city to be lying.. The city was out on notice that next time i will sue their asses off. Re-submit your PRR with as many names as possible. When they search their mainframe it is based on keywords. Do yourself a favor and ask for all text messages and emails from the Chiefs city issued phone. Watch the sparks fly. The city will try and nail you with expenses but they cannot. The carrier has all this information and the client is entitled to it. The city is the client, therefore no work must be done.

That's a great comment, I had never thought to ask for the chief's text messages.  As far as being stonewalled by the city clerk with my public information requests, that's real simple.  I've been told that the IT people over at the city as well as the vendor that the city uses for their IT work are all friends of the chief so it's easy to understand why I'm not getting anywhere with my requests.  After all, doesn't it stand to reason that if there's incriminating emails that will paint the chief in a bad light that his friends would do everything they can to keep them from coming to light?  Regardless, if we don't get anywhere with these requests, we'll take a page from our friend Al Crespo's book and go ahead and sue the city for the documents that we suspect exist and are being kept from us.

On another note, I've been told from several sources that the Miami Dade County Ethics Commission has been sending out subpoenas to various city departments and employees  in preparation for his ethics hearing in January.  If anyone reading has one of these subpoenas, please get me a copy!