Miami manager makes Police Chief Manny Morales permanent

After more than four months, we can remove the word “interim” before Police Chief Manny Morales. No big surprise there.

City Manager Art Noriega announced Monday that he appointed Morales — who has been at the department since 1994 — to the job permanently.

“After further evaluating Chief Morales’ performance during the first 100 days, I am extremely confident that he is eminently qualified, respected and admired by many and will continue to do a great job as Chief for the Police Department,” Noriega said, because, you know, 28 years is not enough to get to know somebody.

Morales has worked as a patrolman and in the field training office in Model City, Little Haiti and Flagami. He has overseen the bomb squad, the SWAT team and has worked in every division of the department. Most recently, he’s been in charge of the uniform division and crime prevention units.

“Furthermore, this decision will ensure stability at the leadership level of the City’s Police department,” the city. manager added in his statement.

Stability? What he meant is that this ensures the continuity of unchecked corruption at the city commission level. They must be elated.

Everybody knew that Morales was the pick from the day he was appointed interim and got a hugging session with the city commissioners, who played the theme from The Godfather in a City Hall office the same week they expressed outrage over being compared to the mafia. There was no national search, no selection committee as commissioners wanted last year.

Even the announcement was made quietly. No press conference to announce what a rock star the new chief is like they did with former Chief Art Acevedo, who was recruited from Houston with a lot of fanfare and pitched as the “Michael Jordan” of police chiefs. He lasted six months.

Acevedo had already started to restructure the department to address longtime abuse and excessive use of force issues when he was fired in October basically for refusing to buckle to political pressure and exposing misconduct by the electeds, or specifically the Three Amigos: Commissioners Joe Carollo, Alex Diaz de la Portilla and Manolo Reyes.

In what is now the infamous 8-page memo, Acevedo — who was already in the hot seat for saying his department (or the city) was run by the Cuban mafia — accused the three men, but Crazy Joe and The Dean mostly, of utilizing the police department as their own private gestapo agency.

“In fact, Carollo and Diaz de la Portilla provided the MPD with a target list of establishments which they claim are engaged in criminal activity and have pointed the finger at establishments in each other’s districts, causing the MPD to investigate business establishments based on nothing,” Acevedo wrote, adding that the city “has wasted untold hours investigating business establishments because of the improper political influence of, and intimidation by, these two commissioners.”

After our esteemed Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle recused herself — one of her attorneys is cousins with a witness — the investigation into Acevedo’s claims was transferred to the Broward SAO. We’re still waiting to hear from them. The city also has an independent investigator — someone who has contributed to Carollo’s political campaigns — looking into them, but Ladra would wait for the SAO report.

Acevedo said the Three Amigos also interfered in disciplinary issues and operations at the police department and in the internal affairs investigation of a sergeant at arms suspected of passing along information about the comings and goings of celebrity Mayor Francis Suarez.

The official reason for Acevedo’s termination, believe it or not, was that he just didn’t mesh well.

Indeed.

They won’t have that anti-meshing problem with Morales, not just because he is a demonstrated kiss-ass, but also because the city has his nuts in a vice. Very qualified sources have told Ladra that Morales was offered only a one-year contract. The city did not provide his contract on Monday, nor did anyone answer questions about any increase in pay or benefits.

But folks who know about these things say Morales — who still has several lucrative years left in his career before he retires — would be crazy to take such an offer and risk losing years of gainful employment on a political whim.

Either crazy or willing to do whatever he has to for commissioners — target their enemies, cover up their car accidents — to keep the job. He is already the self-described primary target of an investigation into the possible cover-up of a car accident involving Commissioner Diaz de la Portilla, who reportedly did not want to be included in the police report.

That kind of thing is a plus in Miami, not a minus. That’s how you earn the permanent gig.

“I am incredibly honored and humbled to be selected as Chief of the Miami Police Department. I would like to thank our City Manager, Art Noriega, for having the confidence in my ability to guide our department into the next chapter,” Morales said in a carefully crafted say-nothing statement.

“I am grateful to Mayor Suarez and all the City Commissioners for their support not only of me, but more importantly their support for all the men and women of the Miami Police that work hard every day to make Miami safer for all.”

Safer for the Three Amigos, that’s for sure.

Art Acevedo, Manny Morales

Miami manager makes Police Chief Manny Morales permanent — for now added by Ladra on February 28, 2022
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