Crime in the City of Miami up by 10.7%!

Amazing isn't it?  The Miami Herald reports that "Crime rate drops slightly statewide and in Miami Dade, rises in Broward" yet the completely ignore the fact that the crime rate in the very city their headquarters are located in has jumped by 10.7%!  Take a look at the statistics from the Herald's own story...

You can find the FDLE report that the story is based on here.  No matter how you cut it, crime in the City of Miami has gone through the roof under Chief Manuel Orosa, blame it on whatever you want, whether it's pay cuts, drastic reductions in the tactical robbery units, etc, Chief Orosa owns this embarrassing statistic.

What I find even more alarming is the refusal of the Herald to report on this black eye for the Regalado/Orosa administration while taking the time to slam Broward county whose crime rate only went up 3.5%!  WTF guys?

A picture is worth a thousand words...

Another gem from the folks over at M&M liquors, even the folks in Hialeah know what time it is...

Still waiting on a verdict on the second phase of the Plantation cops mortgage fraud case, considering they're on their fourth day of deliberations, what do you guys think, good or bad?

After four month trial, the Plantation Cops federal mortgage fraud trial finally goes to the jury and a quick word about suspended City of Miami Police Chief Miguel Exposito.

.

After a long arduous four months, the Plantation cops federal mortgage fraud trial finally went to the jury yesterday.  The jury has requested to take today and the remainder of the weekend off, so deliberations won't begin till Monday at the earliest.  

Let's take a quick look at some twists and turns of the governments case against former Plantation cop Joe Guaracino and his brother Dennis.  At first the government argued that the alleged mastermind of the frauds got nearly a million dollars back in total from the real estate transactions that are at the center of the federal indictment.  The governments position was that that Guaracino and company scammed the closings through questionable huds and purchase contracts but during the course of the trial the defense proved that every penny that Guaracino got from these closings plus nearly a million of his own money was put back into these homes through renovations in order to make them suitable for resale at a profit.  In closing, the government moves away from their original theory and instead personally attacks Guaracino for among other things being a gambler!  

What the prosecution couldn't get around though was the fact that the homes in question were sold and the banks who lent the money were paid back.  The governments theory was that the banks were the victims of this alleged mortgage fraud scheme, my question then is why weren't any of these alleged "victims" ever brought in to testify?  There wasn't a single lender that was allegedly exploited by Guaracino and his group ever brought before the jury to testify, not a single one, no one that had anything to do with reviewing and approving these loans was ever brought before the jury.  I wonder why?

So how could you put a case like this together?  How could you indict a bunch of cops and two attorneys that have no previous records of misconduct with such a flimsy case?  I'm going to guess there was some sort of motivation from the higher ups at the Plantation PD who had a vested interest in bringing these guys down.  I'm trying to figure it out myself, I should have some better answers by Monday.

Now, on to the mess in the City of Miami and suspended police chief Miguel Exposito.  Over the last couple of months all you hear about in the media and the blogosphere is how stupid the chief is, what a dimwit his second in command is, etc.  Let's think about that for a second, could Chief Exposito really be an idiot?  Remember, Mayor Regalado hand picked Expo to replace former city of Miami police chief John Timoney within hours of the mayor taking office.  All Expo had to do from that point forward was to chill out and be the Mayors yes man and his job would be safe.  Fire this guy, promote that guy, look the other way on this matter, make some files disappear on another matter etc.  Follow the mayors orders and as long as the mayors got his job, so do you.  Easy enough right?  Instead of falling in line and being a doormat like city manager Johnny Martinez, Expo and his gang decided to take on illegal gambling in the City of Miami.  Anyone who lives in Miami is intimately familiar with these illegal gambling machines aka "Makinitas", take a look at one of them in action courtesy of our friend Frank Alvarado over at the Miami New Times...

From the New Times article...

Machines like the ones German operates have been the lynchpin of Exposito's accusations against Regalado. The embattled police chief claims the mayor meddled into criminal investigations and raids involving illegal gambling at city cafeterias and bodegas. In October, Regalado championed an ordinance that would fine merchants $500 and allow them to keep the machines, instead of arrest them on state misdemeanor charges of illegal gambling.

Think about it for a moment, if the Chief was such an idiot, why would he go against his benefactor, Mayor Regalado, who's rumored to be in bed with the organizations that are behind these machines?  Why would he risk a cushy six figure plus job?  My opinion?  Regardless of the perceived inadequacies of Expo and his crew, at the end of the day they saw theses machines and the people behind them for what they were, nothing more than an illegal racket that preyed on the poorest people of our beloved city and he decided to go after them.  Does that make him an idiot or was he simply doing what any law enforcement officer was supposed to do?  In my opinion, idiot or not, you can't fault the guy for doing his job. 

The fight against these machines and their owners may have cost the Chief his career, but trust me, if Expo gets fired today, he's not going to go away quietly, we can expect a hefty whistle blower lawsuit from the Chief in short order, then there's the matter of all those federal criminal investigations that the Chief initiated against the Mayor and his crew, it's just a matter of time before all that ugliness comes to the surface.  Let's not forget about those pesky wiretaps!  How is the Mayor going to explain all that away?

Lying to a Grand Jury is OK and our friend Al Crespo unearths even more corruption in the City of Miami...

Back in late May we discovered disturbing inaccuracies in the grand jury testimony that eventually led to the Plantation Cops mortgage fraud indictment.  From what we were able to find, the government misrepresented several important facts to the grand jury which made an already bad situation for the defendants even worse by including incorrect inflammatory statements like these...

With respect to this particular Indictment, we’re talking about the first count, which is a conspiracy count. It’s a conspiracy to commit mail fraud, wire fraud, and filing of false statement with a Government agency, the Department of Housing & Urban Development.

Counts 2 through 12 are the mail fraud counts.  Counts 13 through 25 are the wire fraud counts.  Counts 26 through 33 are the 1001 counts, which is the filing of a false statement with a federal agency.

Q. And the department or agency to which the HUD-1 is submitted is the Department of Housing & Urban Development?

A. Yes.

We now know that these statements were false and misleading, the paperwork in question is in fact not submitted to the Department of Housing and Urban Development or any other federal agency.  The government responded to the defenses motion to dismiss these charges by basically saying fuck it, let the jury decide...

II. ANY PURPORTED ERROR IS RENDERED HARMLESS BY THE PETIT JURY  Any purported errors claimed by the Defendant are rendered harmless if the petit jury convicts the defendant. See United States v. Mechanik, 475 U.S. 66, 72-73 (1986).  Based on the aforementioned argument and facts, the counts in the Indictment should stand and the defendant can be tried on the merits. "An indictment returned by a legally constituted and unbiased grand jury, . . . if valid on its face, is enough to call for trial of the charge on the merits." Costello, 350 U.S. at 363.

I was really hoping that Judge Cohn would recognize how serious these "errors" were and would then dismiss the charges in question.  Wishful thinking I guess... 

Steven Stoll Joe Guaracino Motion to Dismiss Denied

According to the judge the defendants "suffered no prejudice from the United States’ alleged misconduct and his constitutional protections were not jeopardized."  Wonderful, I'm sure the defendants feel the same way.

Now, back to the City of Miami mess for a moment, our friend Al Crepso broke another story yesterday regarding an alleged bribe that Mayor Regalado offered to embattled police chief Miguel Exposito to resign.  According to Mr. Crespo, Regalado offered the Chief $400k to leave, an offer the chief turned down because according to the chief "they couldn’t buy me or my reputation".  That's all well and good, but for those who've been paying attention to the rumors surrounding the feud between the mayor and police chief, this $400k buyout thing isn't exactly anything new.  Rumors of this alleged buyout have been circulating since early January 2011, from what we've heard the chief turned down the buyout because it would have created too much of a tax liability for him.  Regardless of the tax liability or when this "buyout" actually became public knowledge, the question that we're left with is how the hell did the mayor unilaterally decide to give the Chief this offer?  Doesn't something like this (especially of this magnitude) require the a vote by the commissioners?  Worse still, with the city tetering on the verge of bankruptcy, how can they afford to keep giving away massive severance packages like this?  How many murals and led billboards does the city have to put up in order to generate $400K?

The city is on fire folks, the mayor and the police chief publicly feuding, city buildings becoming public billboards, employees showing up part time and taking home over $300k per year, etc.  It's going to be interesting to see what's left when this is all over.