-Caveat Lector-
Subject: ] 11 Miami Officers Facing U.S. Charges in String of
Shootings
-
September 8, 2001
11 Miami Officers Facing U.S. Charges in String of Shootings
By DANA CANEDY
The Associated Press
Raul Martinez, Miami's police chief, said of federal intervention,
"This is painful, but this is something we have to go through to
get better."
MIAMI, Sept. 7 - Nearly a dozen current and former Miami police
officers have been charged with planting evidence and covering up
their actions in a string of police shootings that killed three
people, including a 73-year-old man who died in 1996 in a barrage
of 123 bullets, the authorities said today.
A federal grand jury indictment, announced today, charges the 11
officers with multiple counts of misconduct in cases dating back to
the mid- 1990's, including stealing evidence, placing guns at crime
scenes and lying to avoid prosecution, the authorities said.
Two other retired officers pleaded guilty earlier in the continuing
investigation.
More indictments are likely, said Guy Lewis, the United States
attorney for the Southern District of Florida, and Hector Pesquera,
a special agent in charge with the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
at a joint news conference today.
"The lies of the officers, the throw- down weapons used in the
shootings, reflect corruption within the circle of officers who
conspired together," Mr. Pesquera said. "This circle of officers is
not yet closed."
Miami's mayor and police chief welcomed the federal intervention.
Calling it a "sad day" for the city, Chief Raul Martinez also
announced that he had asked the Justice Department to review the
city's practices and procedures related to police shootings. "This
is painful," he said at a news conference, "but this is something
we have to go through to get better."
At City Hall, Mayor Joe Carollo said he had requested a separate
federal investigation into other possible civil-rights violations
by officers or police officials. Mr. Carollo said that the accused
officers had betrayed the city's trust and that their actions were
part of a systemic problem.
"Police officers cannot be judge and jury," the mayor said. "That
is not how our system works."
Federal investigations of local police departments have been
fiercely resisted by some big-city mayors, most notably Rudolph W.
Giuliani in New York, where police shootings and other incidents of
brutality have caused public outcries in recent years. But one law
enforcement expert said today's developments in Miami were part of
an emerging trend, as some cities have welcomed federal involvement
to lend credibility to their investigations of wrongdoing.
The investigation of the 1,100- member Miami police force is also
notable because of its scope and the number of officers charged,
said the expert, Marie Simonetti Rosen, publisher of Law
Enforcement News, a publication of John Jay College of Criminal
Justice in New York.
"Given the size of the department, that's a big number," Ms. Rosen
said.
The charges against the officers involve many of the most
high-profile shootings in the city's recent history. They include
the case of Richard Brown, 73, who died when police fired into his
apartment during a drug investigation in 1996, and the 1997 case of
a homeless man who was shot while carrying a radio that the police
later said was a gun, according to the authorities.
"To carry out this conspiracy, the officers would seize property,
including guns, from people in the city of Miami and fail to submit
them to the Miami Police Department property room," Mr. Lewis said.
"The defendants would later plant the guns on the scene of
police-involved shootings."
In the inquiries that followed the shootings, Mr. Lewis said, the
officers lied to investigators, prosecutors and judges. Each
officer had worked for two specialized units of the department,
with specific missions to reduce narcotics and so- called
street-level crimes.
Officers Jesus Aguero, Jorge Garcia, Jose Quintero, Israel
Gonzalez, Oscar Ronda and Jorge Castello were charged with
conspiracy to violate citizens' civil rights and conspiracy to
obstruct justice. Each charge carries a penalty of five years in
prison and a $250,000 fine. They are also charged with one or more
counts of obstruction of justice, punishable by 10 years in prison
and a $250,000 fine. Officers Garcia and Gonzalez are also charged
with committing perjury before the grand jury, which carries the
same penalty.
The other officers, Arturo Beguiristain, Jose Acuna, Alejandro
Macias, Rafael Fuentes and Eliezer Lopez were initially indicted in
March on conspiracy charges related to the shooting of Mr. Brown.
But the indictment announced today expanded the charges against
some of the original officers to cover three more shootings and
named the additional officers as defendants.
The retired officers who pleaded guilty, William Hames and John
Mervolion, are awaiting sentencing, the authorities said. They
pleaded guilty to the conspiracy charges.
Lawyers for the officers said the charges were unfounded and
politically motivated. "This is old, recycled dirty laundry hung
out to dry on a new line," said Richard Sharpstein, who represents
Officers Beguiristain and Castello. "All of these cases have been
reviewed and re-reviewed by homicide detectives, internal affairs,
the state attorney's office, but now that the statute of
limitations is running out, the U.S. attorney comes out to save the
day."
But the authorities said the evidence was overwhelming. "Make no
mistake, there was nothing isolated or subtle about the crime these
people committed," said Mr. Pesquera of the F.B.I.
The charges date back to the 1995 deaths of two 19-year-old men,
who were shot at 37 times by officers from an interstate overpass
as they ran away from a robbery scene. The authorities say officers
later planted guns near the men's bodies and claimed they had been
armed.
In the Brown case, officers entered his apartment in March 1996 on
a drug warrant and sprayed his bedroom with 123 bullets. Mr. Brown
was hit by nine bullets and died in a closet. His daughter, Janeka,
then 14, hid in a bathroom. The officers said Mr. Brown had fired
at them, but the authorities say he did not have a gun. Nor were
any drugs found, they say. The city settled a lawsuit with Janeka
Brown for $2.5 million last year.
In a third case under suspicion, officers chased a purse-snatching
suspect and fired three shots at him. One officer then planted a
gun under a tree while another reported that he had found a gun at
the scene, according to the indictment.
Chief Martinez acknowledged that the indictments were a first step
in regaining the public's trust. "For the last few months, the
Police Department has publicly acknowledged that we have had a
problem in the past," the chief said. "Today is the culmination of
dealing with the past, correcting it and moving forward."
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company | Privacy Information
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