Speaker 1: Murder in Miami is a production of iHeartRadio. We touched
Speaker 1: upon the potential for corruption that swirls around the drug
Speaker 1: trade in our last bonus. It's a topic that came
Speaker 1: up with former Miami Day detective Jeff Lewis and was
Speaker 1: particularly evident during Miami's darkest policing period in the late
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, when at one point, nearly ten percent of
Speaker 1: the entire Miami Police Department was suspended or fired after
Speaker 1: a drug related scandal. It seems to me like that
Speaker 1: was a perfect storm because you had this influx of
Speaker 1: drug money pouring into the area and you had a
Speaker 1: need to increase the policing of it, just in terms
Speaker 1: of the sheer number of the volume of officers who
Speaker 1: were hired at that time. And did that negatively impact
Speaker 1: the force?
Speaker 2: I think it was both a positive and a negative.
Speaker 2: Both our department and the City of Miami Police Department
Speaker 2: were in a rush to hire police officers to fill
Speaker 2: the void, both departments on a national recruiting effort, and
Speaker 2: at that time also I believe, like some departments up
Speaker 2: North New York in that area, they were laying off officers.
Speaker 2: So it kind of worked out and Miami Dade ended
Speaker 2: up with officers from all over the north and northeast,
Speaker 2: as well as the City of Miami, although I think
Speaker 2: the City of Miami ended up with more local individuals
Speaker 2: becoming police officers. The problem with that was I don't
Speaker 2: think they were able to do thorough background investigations or
Speaker 2: really delve into who they were hiring just because they
Speaker 2: needed to again fill the void, and as a result,
Speaker 2: the individuals slipped through the cracks that turned out to
Speaker 2: be actually criminals doing police work, and that came to
Speaker 2: fruition later on with the River Cops case, an area
Speaker 2: and some other incidents involving police officers. Now, the plus
Speaker 2: side was they also ended up hiring quite a few
Speaker 2: excellent police officers that I worked with that came on
Speaker 2: with me, became detectives and became ranking individuals within the
Speaker 2: department and were able to guide the department. It was
Speaker 2: a plus an a negative. Fortunately, I think the plus
Speaker 2: side came out ahead in the long run.
Speaker 1: Could you just, in a nutshell explain what the River
Speaker 1: Cops case was?
Speaker 2: Yes, the River Cops case was a group of City
Speaker 2: Miami uniform police officers working the midnight shift would go
Speaker 2: to the Miami River and rob the locations that were
Speaker 2: board the Haitian traders that were coming to Miami. Usually
Speaker 2: they had multiple kilos of cocaine on board, and they
Speaker 2: would literally load up their police cars with cocaine and
Speaker 2: take it out, and then from there they would distribute it,
Speaker 2: sell it, make money doing it, and a lot of
Speaker 2: those robberies weren't reported because theations didn't want to get
Speaker 2: arrested for dealing drugs. And this went on for a
Speaker 2: little while until they hit a boat where the Haitian
Speaker 2: victims actually jumped off the boat they would care for
Speaker 2: their lives, and in doing so, a couple of them
Speaker 2: drowned in the Miami River. This occurred within our jurisdiction,
Speaker 2: so our homicide unit, led by Alex Alvarez, assumed the
Speaker 2: investigation and subsequently arrested twelve or thirteen City Miami uniform
Speaker 2: officers for this homicide and drug dealing and ensnared probably
Speaker 2: another one hundred or so that were caught up one
Speaker 2: way or another in the Sea Mining Police Department. Some
Speaker 2: not rightfully so, but you know, some were guilty by association.
Speaker 2: It was a big mess for the City Mining Police Department.
Speaker 2: In our department because everyone looked down on the police
Speaker 2: at that particular time, and this was again during the
Speaker 2: height of the criminal activity, so it kind of hindered
Speaker 2: us a little bit as well. But eventually they were
Speaker 2: all arrested and exposed and were shut down by our
Speaker 2: police department.
Speaker 1: Am I mistaken in believing that also around this time
Speaker 1: there were actually criminals who would dress up in police
Speaker 1: uniforms and do you know, home break ins And.
Speaker 2: What happened was eventually, as we found out and working
Speaker 2: in robbery, was that that was in fact occurring where
Speaker 2: the criminal element and this was basically initiated after the
Speaker 2: Marrial moment. One hundreds of thousands of Mario Alitos will
Speaker 2: be from prisons and mental wards in Cuba and they
Speaker 2: came to Miami and they needed a job and they
Speaker 2: didn't want to work, not all of them, but a
Speaker 2: lot of them, and they figured out the easiest way
Speaker 2: to rob a drug dealer was to dress up like
Speaker 2: a police officer, get a uniform or get a shirt
Speaker 2: that said the police, draft up a fake warrant, put
Speaker 2: the gun belt on, get a fake badge. Anybody could
Speaker 2: get a badge. You can still get badges today and
Speaker 2: do it and pose as police officers, and we started
Speaker 2: getting these cases. We really didn't know what to think
Speaker 2: at the time because we were a little baffled by it.
Speaker 2: And then we figured out that it wasn't a police
Speaker 2: impersonators doing these home invasion robberies. And they were probably
Speaker 2: thousands of these different groups acted as police officers to
Speaker 2: do these home invasion robberies.
Speaker 1: Wow, I can't imagine how difficult it would have been
Speaker 1: to have been, you know, a good honest cop in
Speaker 1: that time period where you had not only you know,
Speaker 1: an element of rogue criminals within the department, but then
Speaker 1: actual criminals impersonating police officers. All right.
Speaker 2: It was definitely unique. And of course, you know, once
Speaker 2: we figured it out, we started our investigations and sometimes
Speaker 2: working with the FBI or the DA or ATF and
Speaker 2: we started arresting these gangs and you go in and
Speaker 2: start recovering the equipment and the uniforms and the guns,
Speaker 2: and some of them were better equipped than we were.
Speaker 2: Some of them had better firepowers, more firepower than we did.
Speaker 2: And they had police radios. I mean, they would buy
Speaker 2: cars and make them look like police cars at the
Speaker 2: police lights. They would do traffic stops on drug dealers.
Speaker 2: I mean, these guys really took it to the extreme,
Speaker 2: and they made a lot of money doing it because
Speaker 2: again a lot of these robberies were not reported initially
Speaker 2: because the drug dealers didn't want to be identified as
Speaker 2: drug dealers or they didn't want to make themselves known
Speaker 2: to law enforcement. So unless somebody got hurt or shot
Speaker 2: or actually killed during one of these robberies, we had
Speaker 2: no knowledge of it. And then what would happen when
Speaker 2: we started making arrests and we started getting cooperation from
Speaker 2: some of these individuals. They would identify locations to us
Speaker 2: that they had robbed, and we'd checked those locations, we
Speaker 2: would find out that there were no police reports made,
Speaker 2: and of course we'd identify those individuals and pass out
Speaker 2: on to the narcotics detectives.
Speaker 1: Wow, insane, It was crazy. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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