Miami’s newly confirmed police chief, Manuel Orosa, has broad support in the city, but the process that selected him is being questioned.
Picking the police chief is the city manager’s job. Mayor Tomas Regalado has been repeatedly accused of meddling in police affairs since taking office. So a panel was created to select five finalists, in part, to address concerns over transparency in the selection process.
However, at least one citizen panelist says candidates answered only pre-determined questions, no one was allowed ask their own questions of the candidates and, once concluded, no one sought citizen panelists’ opinions.
Juan Coro is a busy man, running his well-known restaurant “Exquisito” on Calle Ocho and volunteering his time. But he’s perplexed why he was even asked to serve on the review panel.
Local
“We were there two consecutive days and we don’t have a chance to make any question, we don’t have a chance to give our opinion,” said Coro. “For me, that was kind of a circus, kind of theatrical.”
Coro believes the selection of Orosa, strongly supported by Mayor Regalado, was a done deal well before the panel started. “Oh yes, absolutely,” he said Thursday, hours after Orosa was named chief by City Manager Johnny Martinez.
Panel chair James Loftus, director of Miami-Dade County Police, says that’s simply not true. He and Miami Fire Chief Maurice Kemp explain the selection of the five finalists was actually up to them alone, but they sought input from the five citizens selected to represent each commissioner’s district.
That wasn’t enough for Coro. He’s suspicious.
“You could have your own deduction,” he said. “We were just sitting over there, and that’s it, I don’t understand the purpose of us to be there.”
It’s a violation of the Miami City charter for any elected official, including the mayor, to meddle in personnel issues, especially the police chief. Although skeptics often point out that the city manager must, in turn, answer to the mayor. So the influence may be indirect.
But on Thursday, Martinez denied Regalado influenced his decision.
“Well, I can tell you he did not,” he said. “As a matter of fact, he found out – I think he was the last one to find out.”
Asked if Regalado ever had a conversation with him about selecting a new chief, Martinez said they were "minor."
“No, no, no, very minor, very minor," Martinez said. "Never, like, ‘you gotta get so and so.’ Or anything like that. Just minor – ‘where are you on the process?’ That sort of thing.”
Martinez also denied any conversations with Regalado about the new police chief when he was hired.
Mayor Regalado was equally emphatic.
"[The panel] vetted all the candidates. They gave the manager five finalists and out of that, he made the selection," Regalado said. "So, he could have done it just with a phone call. The charter allows him to do that. So I think it was unfair to say that the process was wrong.”
City Commissioner Frank Carrollo, who appointed Coro to the panel, raised the issue at Thursday evening’s city commission meeting. Carrollo asked Martinez point blank about the concerns.
Martinez said the citizens’ choices for finalists were conveyed to him in email, something Coro said was done only because he asked. Although Martinez conceded, while the lists were similar to the official list of five finalists, they were not exactly the same.
Coro underscored that while he has concerns about the process, he agrees with the choice of Orosa.
