Miami lifts suspension on controversial police captain after feds quietly end criminal probe
A Miami police captain and former police union president suspended with pay last year after a string of racist comments and other controversies will soon start earning his paycheck again.
But Javier Ortiz appears bound for desk duty — at least for the time being.
The reinstatement comes two weeks after the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., quietly ended a previously undisclosed yearlong FBI investigation into Ortiz, with sources telling the Miami Herald that prosecutors decided there was not enough evidence to charge him for a series of questionable incidents, most involving excessive use-of-force allegations — even though the cases have cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in civil settlements.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement had initiated the probe into Ortiz, who has accumulated dozens of public complaints over the years and forwarded it to the FBI. Neither law enforcement agency released a summary of the findings, but the Justice Department’s decision to close the probe was enough for the Miami police force to put him back to work. He was put on indefinite leave with pay in
January 2020.
“He’s no longer pending in a criminal investigation,” said Miami Deputy Police Chief Ron Papier, when asked why Ortiz had been cleared to return to work.
Papier wouldn’t confirm what Ortiz will be doing but said he will be placed on some type of “administrative assignment.” The deputy chief also said it could be a few weeks before Ortiz begins his assignment because he must clear firearms training and and re-establish his Florida Department of Law Enforcement certification.
A source aware of Ortiz’s return said he’ll likely be working in the agency’s records department where he will oversee all the electronic reports.
Ortiz didn’t return a phone call or a text Monday night.
Though it was not disclosed publicly, federal authorities had spent the past year investigating criminal allegations against Ortiz.
Half a dozen people claimed he violated their civil rights by using excessive force during arrests or making unreasonable searches. The FBI’s corruption squad and the U.S. Attorney’s Office were building a case against Ortiz, believing he used his badge to break the law and deprived the alleged victims of their constitutional rights.
The FBI and federal prosecutors in Miami ran it by the Justice Department’s Civil
Rights Division in Washington, which had final say, according to sources familiar with the probe. Justice Department officials, however, decided there was not enough evidence to charge Ortiz. The case was closed two weeks ago. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami declined to comment Monday.
The probe centered around a series of incidents involving Ortiz when he worked both on- and off-duty jobs. Some of those incidents led to hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawsuit settlements between the city of Miami and Ortiz’s alleged victims. In January, Miami city commissioners approved a $100,000 settlement with Melissa Lopez, who claimed Ortiz broke her wrist during an arrest at Art Basel in December 2017.
The city had previously paid a settlement of $65,000 to Ruben Sebastian, who filed suit in 2016 claiming Ortiz and another officer illegally detained him during a traffic stop and arrested him for resisting an officer. The charges were eventually dropped, but Sebastian lost his job as a security guard for Miami-Dade County.
In 2014, an insurer for Ultra Music Festival paid a
$400,000 settlement to a New York man after Miami police working off-duty details allegedly beat him up outside the venue, according to a lawsuit. Jesse Campodonico was confronted by four cops, including Ortiz, when he complained that an Ultra security guard would not let his girlfriend into the festival with a glow stick in 2011.
Campodonico claimed the cops struck him, choked him, and threw him to the ground, where they then shot him with a Taser three times. Campodonico, who accused Ortiz of fabricating a report to cover up the beating, sued the festival, city of Miami and the police officers. The insurer’s payment resolved the case against all of them.
Campodonico was initially charged with battery, but those charges were dropped.
Earlier on social media he had referred to Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old Cleveland child who was shot dead by a cop as he played with a toy gun in a playground, as a “thug.” He bashed the city’s highest ranking female cop, a Muslim, for not covering her heart during the Pledge of Allegiance.