After a history of bad sheriffs, voters will elect them again
The last time Dade residents elected a sheriff, it didn’t go well. County voters eliminated the post in the 1960s. It’s coming back, thanks to a new state amendment requiring elected sheriffs in every county.
Miami-Dade had better hope its future of elected sheriffs winds up better than its past.
Florida’s Amendment 10 passed statewide Tuesday, a constitutional change that requires Miami-Dade to join the rest of Florida’s counties in electing a sheriff. The amendment also requires election of other appointed offices in Miami-Dade and elsewhere, including elections supervisor and tax collector. Broward already elects its elections supervisor, too, but voters there will begin picking the county’s tax collector under Amendment 10.
Local leaders opposed the amendment, and Miami-Dade unsuccessfully sued to try and block the ballot item. But MiamiDade voters backed it by a wide margin in this week’s election, 58 percent to 42 percent. Statewide, the results were a bit wider, with 63 percent in favor and 37 percent against.
The results of the vote will be slow moving, since elections for sheriff, tax collector and election supervisor aren’t required until 2024.
But with Miami-Dade’s law enforcement operations being run by a new elected official instead of someone appointed by the mayor, the county must figure out how to spin off two of its largest agencies from its 27,600-person
payroll. The new sheriff would run not just the 4,400-person police department, but the 3,000employee jail system, too.
“Our department’s uniforms and colors may change,” Miami-Dade Police Director Juan Perez, an appointee of Mayor Carlos Gimenez, said in an email sent to his department’s staff on Wednesday. “But our commitment, professionalism, integrity and values remain the same.”
Florida’s most populous county hasn’t had an elected sheriff since the 1960s, when a pair of corruption scandals led voters to pass a referendum to abolish it.
The first of those was in 1950, when a U.S. Senate committee made its way to Miami to grill mobsters and cops about alleged illegal activities. Back then, Metro Dade Sheriff “Smiling” Jimmy Sullivan had a tough time explaining to investigators and the 30 million reported television viewers how someone on his salary had managed to build a hefty bank balance.
The scandal that put an end to the elected post came 16 years later, when a Miami-Dade grand jury report described a burglary racket led by Sheriff T.A. Buchanan. The report claimed cops directed criminals to homes filled with expensive goods. The tradeoff: Cops would be elsewhere when the property was stolen on the condition that a share of the bounty went to police.
Buchanan was indicted that summer and later acquitted. Still, voters later in the year chose to do away with an elected sheriff and the county has been appointing one ever since.
Currently, Gimenez holds the authority of sheriff and appoints the county’s police director, who is confirmed by the County Commission.
With the shift from a hired police executive to an elected one, the constitutional change has launched speculation of who might seek the post in 2024. Gimenez, a former Miami fire chief, has openly toyed with idea. When asked about the possibility earlier this year, he didn’t discourage the idea, noting: “I am the sheriff.”
County Commissioner Joe Martinez and Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernandez, both former police officers, are also considered potential candidates, as is former state lawmaker Frank Artiles.
But the wait til the middle of the next decade may be too long for current political leaders. Steadman Stahl, president of the county police union, said he expects the sheriff election to be a popular one.
“I think you’re going to have as many people running for sheriff as you will for the next mayor’s race,” Stahl said, referring to the open race for mayor in 2020, when Gimenez must leave under the county’s term-limit rules.
The union Stahl heads, the Police Benevolent Association, backed Amendment 10, arguing a county is better served by someone elected solely to focus on law enforcement. “When your issue is transit,” Stahl said, citing Miami-Dade’s ongoing transportation debate, “something has to fall off to the side.”
Former Miami-Dade County Manager Merrett Stierheim called a statewide vote to eliminate the appointed post of MiamiDade’s police director, “outrageous” and “a tyranny of the majority.”
He said Tuesday’s vote promises to inject political ambitions into the question of who will run what’s currently a professional police organization. Stierheim recalled how he was able to fire a county police chief in the late 1970s who refused to remake the department to reflect the demographics of the county.
“Now, you get a politician who wants a place to park, so he runs for sheriff. Who thinks a police department needs to be politicized?” he said.
“It’s really disappointing. Look what happened to Ken Jenne.”
Jenne, the former elected sheriff of Broward County, was forced to resign from office in 2007 after federal investigators determined he was committing crimes in his personal business dealings.
He eventually pleaded guilty to tax evasion and mail fraud, accepting a penalty of one year and one day in prison in a case that could have been much worse for him had a grand jury had the chance to indict him on money laundering charges.
Even with an elected sheriff, the current system of funding law enforcement is likely to remain the same. In Broward, the County Commission approves the budget for the sheriff’s office. MiamiDade’s mayor has veto power over budget votes.
In his email to the police staff, Perez said he was working with Gimenez’s office “to create a strategic plan” needed for a smooth transition. He also wrote that the county expects the first sheriff election in 2024, with the winning candidate sworn in the following January.
“As it stands now, our department will not undergo immediate changes,” Perez wrote. “The transi- tion to the Office of Sheriff will not come without challenges. However, we are a great organization and have always been adaptable when faced with challenges.”