Which Blue to Back When Police Are at Odds?

Backing the “Blue” can get tricky.

It hurts to watch Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone as he gets beaten almost to death at the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. And you may be familiar with the photo of Fanone in the crowd, his helmeted face contorted in urgency and anguish as insurrectionists drag him down to the ground in the shadow of a “Thin Blue Line” American flag.

Fanone’s bodycam captures him getting tasered and beaten with “Don’t Tread on Me” and Trump flags nearby.

“I got one!” someone yells while Fanone screams. “Don’t hurt him,” warns another, just before someone else yells “That’s not who we are!”

Right.

Fanone described himself to Time magazine as a “redneck” with a Tidewater drawl who voted for Trump in 2016 because he resented how folks kept running down the police. You never know who’ll turn on you, or how.

It’s therefore interesting to watch how police actually police each other.

Sometimes it’s through cavernous silence, such as that from the national Fraternal Order of Police over the Capitol insurrection. Closer to home, you can look to North Miami City Hall.

Let’s raise the curtain on the five-and-a-half hour Sept. 13 North Miami Personnel Board hearing of Sgt. Neal Cuevas, 67. He is the city’s former assistant police chief, 15-year member of the command staff and 20-year SWAT team leader or assistant commander, and the only recipient of the North Miami Police Department’s highest award, the Medal of Honor. He now works the midnight shift.

On the other side: North Miami Police Chief Larry Juriga, 50, who busted Cuevas down to sergeant as soon as he assumed his position in March 2018. The subject: Cuevas’ protestation of two annual “needs improvement” performance reviews, the first of his storied career. The 2019 and 2020 reports were presented three weeks apart. The department says the short window was due to the time needed to complete an Internal Affairs investigation of Cuevas.

He contends the evaluations were in retaliation for his pending whistleblower suit against the city.

The Crux of the Matter

Dig deeper, and this is no trivial matter. It’s unfinished business from the July 18, 2016, shooting of therapist Charles Kinsey, who was shot in the leg in front by Officer Jonathan Aledda in front of an army of phone cameras. He was protecting a patient with autism who was holding a toy truck some dispatch callers and police officers mistook for a gun. What followed was more than $80,000 in expenditures for a professional review of the police department’s use of force and crisis intervention training.

Cuevas contends Juriga demoted him because he blew the whistle on the department’s persecution of Emile Hollant, the day’s shift commanding officer who was twice exonerated by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and State Attorney, despite the best efforts of some in the police department and city to smoke him. The department is still attempting to bar him from law enforcement, for reasons that remain unclear.

The hearing isn’t finished. Cuevas has yet to present his case, which is slated for Dec. 20.

Chairing the meeting and five-member board was B Douglas Hindmarsh, an ex-Marine and member in good standing of the Florida Bar since 1975. That was the year Cuevas became North Miami’s first Hispanic police officer, enduring occasional hazing and racism in the then overwhelmingly white city and department.

Hindmarsh set the tone with his gravelly voice, salty tongue and long, unkempt gray beard. He may look like a pirate, but he runs a meeting like a federal judge, the sort he has argued before much of his life, parrying lawyers’ objections with ease.

“Let me say this from the start,” he said. “Neal I would trust to have my back in a gunfight. Larry is my own adopted son. That ends when I bring down the gavel.”

With that, Hindmarsh spoke for many in the city. Still, the personnel board is purely advisory and the final decision rests with City Manager Theresa Therilus, who is wrestling to keep the city solvent as council members press for more social programs to help keep themselves in office as professional politicians.

Potential Allies Turned Strident Foes

Juriga and Cuevas are liked and respected around the community. Juriga is the better politician and shines at community meetings and outreach. Cuevas is highly regarded by many police rank-and-file and city employees. His fellow officers elected him their PBA representative in February 2020, a position he also held from 1986-95, and he chairs the city’s pension board. With such complimentary skills and experiences, you’d think the two would work well together, but that isn’t the case.

Juriga, son of a former North Miami assistant chief and nephew of two other officers, joined the city’s Parks and Recreation Department in 1987 and its police department in 1994. He became chief in March 2018, launching the slogan “Making a Positive Impact” and engaging with the public. He’s pulled out of a few tight spots since then, most notably in May 2016, when the department lost its accreditation, partly under his watch. For a time, Juriga as assistant chief was exiled to manage code enforcement before coming back in 2017 as interim chief and then permanent chief.

Once in, he worked to create accountability, de-escalating training and more in the ensuing three years, winning conspicuous praise from the Commission for Florida Law Enforcement Accreditation (CFA), which restored the department’s accreditation in February 2020.

For pension reasons, Juriga is retired and on a $210,000 annual contract which comes up in April. So succession time approaches and could be imminent.

The witnesses against Cuevas were Maj. Ransom Carter, a 16-year veteran of the force, and Commander Ernesto Reyes, who has worked in the city for 23 years.

As their boss watched closely, Carter and Reyes independently painted a picture of Cuevas as detached in performing his supervisory duties, lacking in enthusiasm or will to improve, and even lacking in judgment.

“At this point, I shouldn’t be educating Sgt. Cuevas. Sgt. Cuevas should be educating me,” said Carter. “It’s not ability. He’s a sharp guy. It’s a matter of caring and concern.”

Carter and Reyes were excellent witnesses. The city had a good lawyer, but Cuevas’ representation fell short. Toward the end, Hindmarsh reminded Cuevas’ lawyer to stay by the mic so he could issue objections in a timely manner and stay quicker on his feet.

Winners & Losers

Cases are often won or lost on lawyering. You can argue a case or tell a story 700 different ways and be correct in every detail, just as you can steer an Internal Affairs investigation if you’ve got the pull. Still, at times, the evening carried the whiff of a Star Chamber, a court-martial or a curious mating of Mickey Mouse and kangaroo court.

Watching the proceedings, questions reverberated.

What message do we wish to send? What are we trying to prove and how will this help? The city’s in a terrible money crunch and police morale has fallen. Officers may show up to roll call, only to get their shifts or duties yanked around or doubled, leaving a dangerous shortage on the road and unfilled positions. The department is roughly 25 officers short. This aids neither recruiting or morale and costs a lot of talent, time and taxpayer money.

This isn’t about Cuevas or Juriga or the money. They are and will be fine. Cuevas could retire today with a $2.5 million-plus payout. Juriga’s fully vested and can always join his dad in the family franchise providing security for their beloved Miami Dolphins or perhaps ascend further in city management.

That’s not the point. Cuevas won’t go quietly. He once received a Justice Department commendation for posing undercover as an international drug dealer. Maybe Cuevas is forcing the issue by challenging his assessments, just as he paid a price for standing alone in protesting Hollant’s persecution.

He isn’t done with the state whistleblower lawsuit, either. His lawyer, Michael Pizzi, says he plans to take depositions in October and November and get it to trial by the end of the year. Just last month he also filed a federal age-discrimination suit on Cuevas’ behalf.

Said Pizzi, who is co-counsel with high-profile white-collar lawyer Benedict Kuehne, “Clearly they’re trying to make his life miserable in retaliation for his lawsuits. Nobody believes Neal doesn’t know how to be a cop after 46 years.”

Here’s the real question. What message does this send young recruits and officers who wish to grow and ascend the ranks? Is it to get along by going along? What kind of police department will the next police chief inherit and create? Isn’t there plenty of room for both Juriga and Cuevas to end their careers with honor?

We may not be “better than this.” But isn’t it worth a try?