Karma, reflecting on last week's events...

As we all know, last Thursday the City of South Miami commission adopted a resolution that stated that former police chief Orlando Martinez de Castro's employment contract was voided when he took on the position of acting city manager.  A couple of hours later city manager, Steven Alexander, issued a memorandum appointing Major Rene Landa acting police chief since he concluded that he "had no police chief in place".

Shortly after the commission meeting, de Castro's son, Christopher Martinez de Castro, confronted me and accused me of "writing bullshit about his family, wrecking his family, putting his family through hell, etc" and ultimately concluded his tirade by calling me a "bitch ass nigger" then tried to physically attack me.  That's all well and good, its understandable that the friends and family of the de Castro clan would be upset, after all their patriarch just lost a formidable position within the community as well as six figure salary, in part because of my actions.  

This must be a traumatizing experience for the former chief and his family, I can only imagine.  Somehow though, I know what it feels like to be publicly humiliated and accused of all sorts of wrong doing, I know the shame that is visited upon a family after being written about in the local media for your alleged nefarious deed.  I suspect that the three tellers that were framed for stealing tens of thousands of dollars from de Castro's wife's tag agency have some idea of what this feels like as well, accused of wrongdoing, humiliated in public, thrown out on the street with no job, etc.  How about Warren Papove?  I suspect he knows how it feels?  Taken away from his home and thrown into detention for months on end then deported, for what?  Some bullshit immigration charge trumped up by some bogus code enforcement violation that the former chief de Castro dreamed up?

I could go on and on with stories of people getting screwed by former chief de Castro, the one distinction that Mr de Castro enjoys when compared to these other folks is that he wasn't falsely arrested, striped of his rights then had to fight the criminal court system for months if not years to clear his name.  Next time the members of the de Castro clan are sitting around thinking about how unjust everything that has happened to them is and what an asshole I am for writing about their misdeeds, think about the people that you've fucked over and just how bad you've altered the course of their lives.  

Consider that the girls from the Airways Auto Tag case were/are facing 190 years in prison for the crimes that you've accused them of committing, consider how you racially profiled and victimized prominent attorney Joe Klock's law clerk countless times for no other reason than his skin color, consider the different city employees, constituents and former elected officials whose lives were shattered because of your political machinations.  Take a moment while you're stewing over what happened to you over the last year or so culminating with the loss of your beloved job as chief and think about the people I've mentioned and the countless numbers of people I haven't mentioned and contemplate what you've done to them before you lash out at me or any of your other critics.  Only then can you come to peace with yourself and your actions.

It's official, Orlando Martinez de Castro is no longer the Chief of Police of the City of South Miami.

I heard the news last night just as I was getting out of the the shower after work...

While mainstream media was all over the place in their reporting of the circumstances which brought about the demise of embattled City of South Miami police chief Orlando Martinez de Castro, I thought it best to get something official from the city regarding de Castro's termination.  I reached out to my sources in the police department and got this memorandum that was distributed throughout the city by City Manager Steven Alexander...

  City of South Miami City Manager Steven Alexander Relieves Orlando Martinez de Castro From Duty

WTF!?  This bit is priceless...

These facts made it clear, that in my capacity as City Manager, I had no alternative but to find that I had no Chief of Police in place.

What about that guy down the hall sitting in the chief's office?

With that said, City Manager Alexander appoints Major Rene Landa the interim police chief.  As I'm told, yesterday the chief's photo was taken down from the walls of City Hall and one of our commenters stated that there were a couple of other members of his command staff that were packing their belongings.  I haven't confirmed any of that yet, we'll report back when we do.

That's enough for today.  I know we haven't heard the end of Orlando Martinez de Castro, I'm sure he's gonna be giving us tons of new material to write about over the next several months.  Now we'll turn our energies towards finally blowing what's left of the Airways Auto Tag agency case out of the water.  Till then...

One can judge a man by the company he keeps.

So Greek playwright Euripides said.  If indeed that is true, then what can we say about the company embattled city of South Miami police chief Orlando Martinez de Castro keeps?  If indeed the person he copied in the email we discussed earlier this week was Camillo Padreda, then what does this say about the chief?  Before we get all philosophical, let's first look into Mr. Padreda's past, one of our readers was kind enough to forward us this transcript of a deposition that Mr Padreda gave back when he when he was a government witness against then Hialeah mayor Raul Martinez.  It's lengthy but worth the read and will make you wonder why the hell the chief is affiliated with this guy let alone let him hang around city hall.  Take a look and we'll discuss the highlights tomorrow...

  Camillo Padreda Testimony against Hialeah mayor Raul Martinez by   The Straw Buyer

Who is padcam@aol.com? The answer is in our comments section...

We left off last week with this lingering question, who is the person that City of South Miami Police Chief Orlando Martinez de Castro copying in an email from his city email account while soliciting business for his wife's insurance agency?  The chief carbon copied someone at "padcam@aol.com" in his email and we asked our readers who that email belonged to and we were given the answer in one of the comments on last Friday's post...

padcam = cam-pad = Camilo Padreda:
convicted felon, former president of Latin American Builders Assn., funded political campaigns & legal defense for Valerie Newman ("La Gorda"), tight personal friends with your chief.
Some old history:http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2003-01-30/news/a-friend-indeed/

Yikes!  Another reader goes on to say...

Why read the New Times article when when you can read Camilo's sworn testimony under cross examination of Raul Martinez's defense attorneys. Padreda copped a plea to falsifying a HUD financial statement so the Feds would not charge his daughter and under the plea he agreed to spill the beans on everybody. Padreda admitted to bribing County Commissioner Jorge Valdez, bribing City of Miami Commissioner Demetrio Perez (in Al Cardenas's office) missappropriating funds from Jefferson Savings Bank in Texas, hiding a 100K profit from a HUD property (Porta del Sol) in the form of a real estate commission, stiffing subcontractors out of 1.4M when he declared Bankruptcy, only to have his wife buy a 535K medical office weeks later, and falsifying a cost statement to HUD, His daughter was about to get indicted so Camilo copped a plea and agreed to sing on everybody including Raul Martinez so she wouldn't. This is the same "best friend of the (Miami) police who got Hector Mirabile promoted from Lieutennant to Major. Your hard earned tax dollars went to buy carpet from the Gibson Bethyl community center from his wife Janet Padreda's carpet company. Instead of installing padding for the weight room like what was budgeted, every big wig in the PD was getting their office measured for new carpet.

HUH?  What the hell is a law enforcement officer, let alone a chief of police doing copying this sort of unsavory fellow in emails sent from his city email address?!  Once again, from our comments section...

The answer to the question is the relationship between the OMG, CAMPAD and the acting manager goes back sometime.

I suppose "OMG" is the new moniker for Orlando Martinez de Castro, fair enough...

OMG joined LBA (despite not being a B) back when CamPad was boss and OMG was unemployed.

Nice.  Once again, I'll ask, if indeed padcam@aol.com is this Camillo Padreda character, why is the chief interacting with him while on city time let alone at all while in an official capacity?  And if this commenter is correct and this guys wife's carpet company is doing business with the city, his past certainly doesn't reflect well on anyone doing business with him or any of his affiliated companies.  We'll have to take a look at this carpet contract business and see what we can find.

The email that earned City of South Miami Police Chief Orlando Martinez de Castro one of his ethics charges...

After literally months of trying, I was finally able to get a copy of the email that earned embattled City of South Miami police chief Orlando Martinez de Castro one of the many charges from the Miami Dade County Ethics Commission.  From the Ethics Commission press release regarding the chief...

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.

That bit about the chief's wife owning the insurance agency isn't exactly correct as this document from Sunbiz shows...

  Orlando Martinez de Castro Insurance Agency by  

Based on what we see here, the chief himself is an officer of this insurance agency, regardless, let's take a look at that email...

  OMC Solicits Business by  

Now this email raises a few interesting points, first we clearly determine that the chief was sending these emails that had nothing to do with his job as police chief during business hours while he was being paid by the tax payers of the City of South Miami, specifically Wednesday April 6th at 4:19 pm.  The email is addressed to jrodriguez2813@comcast.net who I presume is someone named Jossie Rodriguez that's got something to do with the insurance business, as well as two others, the chief's wife and someone else that I was unable to identify whose email address is listed as "padcam@aol.com".  Any of our readers have any idea who this padcam email belongs to or why the chief copied this person on this email?  If you do, drop us a line.

So there you have it, granted this is just one email we found where the chief was conducting business that has nothing to do with the city on city time using his city email and city assets which is clearly a violation of his employment contract.  As I said yesterday, if a professional investigator was given the task of going through the last four or so years of the chief's emails and phone records I can only imagine how many other instances like this one they'd find.  The question again is why hasn't this been done yet?

Taking a closer look at embattled City of South Miami Police Chief Orlando Martinez de Castro's employment contract.

With all the noise around embattled City of South Miami police chief Orlando Martinez de Castro's pending ethics issues and his problems with the city commission, I think it's worthwhile to take a closer look at his employment contract.  We first posted his employment contract during our last discussion regarding the grievance the chief filed for having the parking and code enforcement departments taken away from him, this time, I'm particularly interested in section 1.2 of the contract which states...

1.2 Employee shall report to the City Manager. Employee hereby accepts such employment. During the Term of Employee's employment by City, Employee shall (a) devote substantially all of his full business time, abilities and attention exclusively to the diligent performance of his duties with City in a professional manner and in accordance with applicable law and (b) not engage in any other business activity, whether or not such activity is pursued for profit or advantage; provided, however, that Employee may engage in personal and/or passive investment and charitable activities and continue to operate Employee's security consulting business (OMC Consultants, Inc., a Florida corporation), so long as such activities do not materially interfere with the performance of his duties under this Agreement and do not result in a conflict of interest in regards to Employee's duties and obligations to the City. All non City related work will be done under the Employee's personal time and will not use any City asset during that time. The City shall not be held responsible or liable for any and all action taken by Employee during his activities for OMC Consultants, Inc. or other personal
engagements out of the scope of his employment.

Let's break that down:

Employee shall report to the City Manager.  

All good.

Employee hereby accepts such employment.  

Once again, all good here as well.

During the Term of Employee's employment by City, Employee shall (a) devote substantially all of his full business time, abilities and attention exclusively to the diligent performance of his duties with City in a professional manner and in accordance with applicable law and (b) not engage in any other business activity...

I don't know about this part as we have evidence that while we know the chief was on the job he was busy soliciting business for his wife's business.  From the ethics complaint...

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.”

While we know about the chief sending city business to his wife's tag agency, it's the second part regarding the conflict of interest and the "prohibition on exploitation of official business" that speaks directly to the clause in his employment contract.  It get's better, let's go back to the contract again...

...not engage in any other business activity, whether or not such activity is pursued for profit or advantage; provided, however, that Employee may engage in personal and/or passive investment and charitable activities and continue to operate Employee's security consulting business (OMC Consultants, Inc., a Florida corporation), so long as such activities do not materially interfere with the performance of his duties under this Agreement and do not result in a conflict of interest in regards to Employee's duties and obligations to the City.

Considering the evidence in the ethics complaint, this could be a bit of a problem.  The contract goes on to state...

All non City related work will be done under the Employee's personal time and will not use any City asset during that time. 

Again, from the ethics commission's press release...

Last April, Chief de Castro used his city e-mail account to solicit business for his wife’s agency.

WHOOPS!  Now remember, this isn't conjecture, it's fact, the chief used his city email address and the city's  "asset" to solicit business for his wife's insurance agency during business hours when he should have been working on city business.  That clearly puts the chief in violation of his employment contract and it least in my humble opinion gives the city grounds to fire him with cause as his contract requires.
 
Now, before the trolls come out of the woodwork and start leaving nasty comments, keep in mind that I'm one person who's done a cursory review of the chief's antics over the last couple of years.  With that said, look at the kind of crap we've uncovered that's put Martinez de Castro in the spot that he's in today.  I'm sure if a competent investigator and or law enforcement agency was put on the case they'd find much more of the same if not worse.  The question that we're left with now is why hasn't this been done yet and more importantly, why is Orlando Martinez de Castro still employed by the City of South Miami?
 

A rumor heard around the City of South Miami PD and a correction from yesterday's post.

There's a nasty rumor going on over at the City of South Miami PD the last couple of days.  Our sources at the PD are suggesting that embattled police chief, Orlando Martinez de Castro, is going to be suspended by the new city manager.  Like I said, at this point it's nothing but an unsubstantiated rumor and until which time I can provide some sort of proof we should treat it as such.  My sources also tell me that there are several members of the South Miami PD brass that are angling for the chief's job, I have to wonder though, considering that the chief has stacked his management team chock full of cronies, would the commission allow his replacement to be chosen from within the ranks?

On another note, the Miami Herald reporter that I quote yesterday as saying "Commissioner Harris was involved in a hit and run" contacted me and asked me to make a correction.  According the the Herald reporter the PD source told them that...

 "A South Miami commissioner was involved in a hit and run near Dadeland Mall".  

While it's not exactly what I had quoted, the source's intent was the same, to create a scandal when there wasn't one.

Stay tuned...