Latest police review panel: Give controversial Miami captain job back, rescind reprimands
Only six weeks after a police oversight panel recommended firing a controversial Miami police captain, another board tasked with recommending discipline in police cases reached the opposite conclusion.
Miami’s five-member Disciplinary Review Board unanimously disagreed with nine reprimands handed down to Miami Police Capt. Javier Ortiz by an internal affairs supervisor who investigated his off-duty work slips. The IA chief recommended that Ortiz be fired.
“Instead of a recommendation of termination, the board members unanimously agreed to rescind the reprimand,” Miami Maj. Jesus Ibalmea wrote in a brief synopsis that didn’t explain why the board reached the conclusion.
In mid-July, a three-member panel of senior officers put in place by Police Chief Manny Morales, recommended demoting or firing Ortiz for actions during a pair of incidents in 2021. One case involved time sheets for off-duty work. Panel members determined Ortiz turned his hours over to a subordinate and not the proper supervisor. The other incident involved the driver of a car Ortiz had pulled over. The board said the captain ignored proper safety measures.
The dueling recommendations are now on the chief’s desk. Morales — who suspended Ortiz in October 2021 — will ultimately decide the fate of the veteran officer and former police union president.
“I have to take a look now at the facts and the evidence. I’ll also take into consideration the history of the officer involved and make a final decision,” Morales said. “These are only recommendations to the chief. The final decision lays with me.”
Griska Mena, an attorney for Ortiz, said based on the most recent panel, which she said had the advantage of using all previous findings as evidence, her client should be back in uniform.
“The reprimands should be rescinded. It’s the only just outcome,” she said. “And Capt. Ortiz should be able to return to work.”
The panel’s decision was bolstered by a letter signed by former chief Art Acevedo in late July that said he discussed the traffic stop with Ortiz and found no violation and that the chief had authorized Ortiz to turn in his time sheet to a sergeant. Acevedo was fired in October 2021 after a contentious six-month stint in Miami. One of the arguments used during a pair of sometimes unhinged hearings that determined the chief’s fate was that he had warmed to Ortiz, who some commissioners wanted gone.
Years of controversy
The findings this week by the disciplinary panel are the latest in a long, drawn-out fight to have Ortiz — a thorn in the side of police brass for years — removed from the department. It began in January 2020 when then-Chief Jorge Colina suspended Ortiz, who once claimed he was Black and not Hispanic, to the city’s lone Black commissioner. Ortiz was back in uniform by February 2021 and unexpectedly befriended by Acevedo, who said one of his first jobs as chief was to look into the captain’s actions.
What followed were dueling Internal Affairs findings. The first one under Acevedo found Ortiz had committed no wrongdoing with his off-duty slips. But another IA investigation after Morales took over determined Ortiz had committed nine violations and should be terminated. Those IA decisions were followed by the competing findings of the two police oversight panels.
Over the years the 18-year veteran who served several terms as president of the city’s police union, berated the city’s highest ranking Black Muslim woman for not covering her heart during the Pledge of Allegiance. And he got into a tiff with Beyonce and threatened to boycott her concert because he thought she was sympathetic to the Black Panther movement.
He called 12-year-old Tamir Rice, shot and killed by a Cleveland cop as the child played with a toy gun, a thug. He flew to Ferguson, Missouri, to barbecue with officers there after civil unrest broke out when an officer shot and killed an unarmed Black man named Michael Brown during a confrontation. And he was accused of doxing a woman, even releasing her cellphone number publicly and showing pictures of her allegedly drinking on social media sites, who videotaped an officer who she said passed her at over 100 miles per hour.
READ MORE: ‘A pattern of abuse and bias’: A Miami cop’s history of bad policing detailed in report
Then in April of 2021 the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the FBI concluded a two-year investigation into Ortiz that said the officer’s actions over the years represented “a pattern of abuse and bias against minorities, particularly African-Americans.” The review was based on more than a half-dozen confrontations between the police officer and civilians as well as complaints by fellow Miami cops. The 53-page report also found that Ortiz “has been known for cyber-stalking and doxing civilians who question his authority or file complaints against him.”
The FDLE chose not to move forward with criminal charges because it said most of the incidents it looked at had exceeded the statute of limitations.
