Embattled City of South Miami Police Chief Orlando Martinez de Castro issues a mea culpa regarding the Airways Auto Tag agency scandal.

Just when things were getting a little boring regarding the embattled City of South Miami Police Chief, Orlando Martinez de Castro, and the mess he created by sending city business over to his wife's tag agency, we get an anonymous email that manages to stir the pot up again.  

Now before we go ahead and post up the email, think about the circumstances, I bust the city sending business over to the chief's wife's tag agency, a tag agency well outside the City of South Miami city limits.  According to my sources and the witnesses that I interviewed, the Chief routinely sent city business to his wife's tag agency, not only did he have people from the city travel ten or so miles to his wife's tag agency to transact business but according to several of the tag agency's ex employees, the chief would bring home tag work from the city and give it to his wife who would bring it back the following evening for the chief to bring back to the city.  All well and good, right?  As we now know, my version of events was good enough for not only the Miami Herald to pick up but it was credible enough that the Miami Dade County Ethics Commission went ahead and conducted an investigation into the matter and ultimately ended up charging the chief with four ethics violations.

Now, let's put the shoe on the other foot for a moment and look at things from the Chief's perspective.  According to the Chief, he had no idea that the city was taking business over to his wife's tag agency and in fact it was Major Ana Baixauli who approved and conducted these transactions without his knowledge.  Ok, for the sake of argument, let's be fair and say that the chief's explanation is plausible.  Now, if you were in the chief's position, how would you feel about this situation?  Think about it for a moment, some jerk with a blog on the last page of the internet outs some embarrassing business transactions between your employer and your wife's business, the Miami Herald picks up the story and further spreads this embarrassing story and all the while according to his explanation, he had nothing to do with the whole deal and even worse, the whole mess was orchestrated by one of his underlings, Major Baixauli, how would you feel if you were the chief?  I know if I was in his shoes, I'd be rip roaring mad, I'd of walked into the police department and ripped Major Baixauli a new asshole and held her responsible for what went down.  

Strangely enough, that's not what happened.  Instead of holding those that were allegedly accountable for this mess that was visited upon the chief, the chief goes ahead and sends out an email apologizing for the mess that he created, take a look at the email for yourselves...

Wait a minute!  WTF!

The chief's apologizing for sending business over to his wife's tag agency!  I thought it was Baixauli's fault?  What would the chief be apologizing if it wasn't his fault?  Why the hell isn't there an email or any kind of record for the chief reprimanding the Major?  LOL!

This is only the beginning of the email, we'll discuss the rest of the email tomorrow.  Till then, thanks again to the reader who sent me the email and as always, if you have something you'd like to send me anonymously, go to www.silentsender.com and fire away!

City of South Miami Swat team shuts down Sunset Place...

As the title states, last Friday the City of South Miami Swat team responded to the Shops at Sunset Place where they were told that there was a man carrying a rifle.  From the Miami New Times story...

Police Swarm Sunset Place Because a Man Had an Umbrella

By Kyle Munzenrieder
Published Fri., Feb. 15 2013 at 4:45 PM

Sunset Place, the South Miami open air shopping mall where teenage cliches go to die, was riled up today because a man was carrying an umbrella.

Dozens of police and a SWAT team swarmed the mall because they thought the umbrella-carrying man was in fact holding a rifle.

"It seemed like every single cop in Miami was right there," witness Kristina McGuire, 20, told NBC Miami.

"Miami police and SWAT team at Sunset Place! What's going on?" tweeted Alvaro Vega, according to The Miami Herald.

Managers called employees to inform them of the situation.

Meanwhile, students at the nearby University of Miami were warned at about 3:10 p.m. by the school's police department of the situation.

Of course, the fracas died down once authorities realized the guy was carrying an umbrella. It is rainy out today, after all.

"Nothing is going on," South Miami Major Ana Baixauli told The Herald in a bit of an understatement. "It was just a scare."

Considering all the crazy gunman shit that's been going on lately, it's hard to blame the South Miami PD for making this kind of mistake, on the other hand, I'm told that the PD has been practicing just such a scenario in this same mall over the last few months.  Taking that into account as well as the fact that chief Orlando Martinez de Castro purchased 50 M16's and had them converted into semi automatic rifles, it makes you wonder if this wasn't a simple case of a bunch of amped up cops that were all dressed up and ready with no place to go?  Also, why does a 30 member police department need 50 M16s to patrol a 2.5 square mile city?  Who knows.  I guess we should be thankful that the "gunman" was only carrying an umbrella, albiet one that allegedly had "a handle that could be mistaken for a firearm or some other kind of weapon" according to police.  The moral of this story?  DO NOT WALK INTO SOUTH MIAMI WITH AN UMBRELLA!

So what about that ethics hearing that was supposed to happen this month?

Several months ago the Miami Dade Ethics Commission sent out a press release stating that they were going to move forward with a public hearing into the alleged ethics violations committed by City of South Miami police chief Orlando Martinez de Castro.  In case you missed it, here it is again...

Police Chief faces ethics violations
The police chief of South Miami is facing four charges of violating ethics laws for steering city business to his wife’s companies. The Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust (COE) today found probable cause that Chief Orlando Martinez de Castro violated South Miami’s “prohibition on transacting business with the city,” as well the County Conflict of Interest and Code of Ethics Ordinance’s “prohibition on exploitation of official position.” The complaint against Martinez de Castro (C 12-31) cites three times during 2011when the South Miami Police Department contracted with Airways Auto Tag Agency for tags and titles for forfeiture vehicles. Airways is owned by Ileana Martinez de Castro, the police chief’s wife. She also owns Beck & Lo’s Insurance Agency, Inc. Last April, Chief de Castro used his city e-mail account to solicit business for his wife’s agency. The case will proceed to a public hearing.

Shortly after the press release, our sources from within the ethics commission told us that the case was going to proceed to a public hearing at some point during January 2013.  Well, guess what?  Here we are smack dab in the middle of January 2013 and I haven't heard word about an ethics commission hearing regarding the police chief.  WTF is that about?

In fact, to add insult to injury, last Friday I was told that the hearing has been postponed till some time this summer!  HUH?

How the hell could that be?  From our standpoint, this seemed like a slam dunk, open and shut case, what in the hell is Joe Centerino and his cohorts on the ethics commission thinking about?  Isn't it amazing how quickly the ethics commission acts with certain politicians and how they drag their feet with others?  Could the ethics commission's decision to postpone the hearing have anything to do with embattled City of South Miami police chief Orlando Martinez de Castro's relationship with Centorino's former boss and state attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle?  Who knows, at the very least, this is a disappointing turn for Centorino's commission and possibly just another example of how when it comes to "let em go Joe" nothing has changed.

We'll drop the Ethics Commission an email and see what they have to say.

City of South Miami police chief in deep shit...

It seems like just yesterday we were moaning about how the Miami Dade County Ethics Commission was dragging it's feet in the investigation that arose from our ethics complaint against the City of South Miami Police Chief, Orlando Martinez de Castro, for steering city business to his wife's tag agency.  Literally an hour after I made that post we get this email from the Ethics Commission...

For Immediate Release:  October 23, 2012
Contact: Joseph Centorino, Executive Director
 (305) 350-0613 or centori@miamidade.gov

Police Chief faces ethics violations 

The police chief of South Miami is facing four charges of violating ethics laws for steering city business to his wife’s companies.  The Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust (COE) today found probable cause that Chief Orlando Martinez de Castro violated South Miami’s “prohibition on transacting business with the city,” as well the County Conflict of Interest and Code of Ethics Ordinance’s “prohibition on exploitation of official position.”  The complaint against Martinez de Castro (C 12-31) cites three times during 2011when the South Miami Police Department contracted with Airways Auto Tag Agency for tags and titles for forfeiture vehicles.  Airways is owned by Ileana Martinez de Castro, the police chief’s wife.  She also owns Beck & Lo’s Insurance Agency, Inc.  Last April, Chief de Castro used his city e-mail account to solicit business for his wife’s agency.   The case will proceed to a public hearing.

HOLY CRAP!

This press release confirms rumors that we heard months ago.  Our sources told us that the ethics commission had issued a probable cause letter several months ago and that Chief Martinez had hired a criminal defense attorney that was trying to cut a deal with the Ethics Commission to let him simply get off with a fine or some other slap on the wrist.  Luckily for us, the Ethics Commission stood firm and refused to let Chief Martinez off, now we have to wait for the public hearing and see how things pan out.  Our sources also tell us that Chief Martinez has hired Miami doper era criminal defense attorney Simon Steckel to defend him during this ethics investigation.  Mr Steckel is an interesting character with a checkered past, you can read a little about him here and here.

The consequences of this public hearing could be dire for the chief, let's not forget that if he's found guilty, his cushy job as the chief of police is TOAST!  What's really sick about this whole ordeal though is that we're told that the Chief's defense is going to consist of making City of South Miami Police Major Ana Baixauli the scapegoat for his misdeeds.  That's too bad but is to be expected from someone like Chief Martinez, I guess we'll have to end up giving the ethics commission the video recordings of people we interviewed over the last year who told us in no uncertain terms that the Chief himself directed them to take city business to his wife's tag agency...