Miami considering MPD chief finalists

The search for a new Miami City police chief is near its end after 70 applications for the job were whittled down to eight finalists about a week ago. The final decision-maker is Miami City Manager Art Noriega, who himself is less than a year on the job after serving as CEO of Miami Parking Authority for 20 years.

Five out of the eight finalists already work for the Miami Police Department. They include Deputy Chief Ron Papier, Assistant Chief Armando Aguilar, Assistant Chief Cherise Gause, Assistant Chief Manuel Morales and Major Francisco Fernandez.

Other applicants include DeShawn Beaufort, chief inspector of the Philadelphia Police Department; Raul Pintos, deputy chief of the New York City Police Department; and Jason Lando, commander of the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police.

Of the eight finalists, only Gause and Beaufort are Black.

Ruban Roberts, past president of the Miami-Dade branch of the NAACP, said he wanted to see more diversity in the MPD, which he described as a largely Hispanic, male-dominated police force. Roberts also said he’d love to see a Black chief, and said Gause, a 26-year-veteran of the MPD, is a great candidate.

“I think she has a good feel and a good handle on what is going on, and she has worked well with people of all ethnicities and races,” Roberts said. He believes that Papier, the current second-in-command of the MPD, would also make a good chief, noting that “he has worked well with the Black community and the Hispanic community as well.”

But Stanley Jean-Poix, president of the Miami City Police Benevolent Association (MCPBA), Miami's Black police union chief, said he believed that Gause and Papier were just too close to retiring Chief Jorge Colina to truly reform the MPD.

“I want someone who is progressive, that will do things fair and square and address our concerns. Someone who will make us better, and better serve the community and the officers who work for them,” Jean-Poix said.

He insisted that Colina, who in September 2020 announced he would retire in January, did nothing to curb discrimination or corruption within the MPD. Instead, Jean-Poix said that Colina was hostile to the MCPBA, an organization that has represented Black officers in the MPD since 1946.

“He was very retaliatory against us, launching internal affairs investigations, and he let it be known to [officers] not to be a member of the MCPBA,” Jean-Poix said.