For some City of Miami police officers, women and wine were the order of the day at the Bowl Bar in 1993. There, according to prosecutors, three officers received free drinks and prostitutes, as well as cash, in return for protecting a drug operation that used the popular Little Havana tavern as its headquarters. Two of the officers were convicted of drug-conspiracy charges in 1994; the third was acquitted. Additionally, the bar's owner and a partner were convicted of running a cocaine distribution network. The bar subsequently closed; a sign on the outside wall says "Re-open soon under new management."
And in the early Seventies, another group of police officers, this time from Metro-Dade and Miami, got into a spot of trouble at Pier 17, a defunct drinkery located near the Marine Bar on NW Seventeenth Street. The place was popular at the time among cops and prosecutors. Lt. Gerald Green, a 28-year veteran of the Miami Police Department, recounts the story: "There were two, three Metro officers and two or so Miami officers drinking at the bar. The two groups of individuals had a difference of opinion about speaking rudely to a barmaid." The Metro officers had allegedly said some "ugly things" to the woman, recalls Green, whose now-retired partner was one of the Miami cops involved. "From that point on some ugliness happened. It ended up in a lively discussion from the bar stools to the floor to the sidewalk out front."
At this juncture in the story, Green says, rumor has kicked in, with tales of arrests, a gun discharging, and an all-out brawl in the gutter making the rounds. "There was a Metro officer detained in a police car until the brass got over," he notes. "The captain of that shift decided the incident would be handled by the respective departments." In the end no charges were filed, but the event generated some animosity between various members of the two departments. "Now, though, it's just one of our many campfire stories," Green chuckles.
At least one eatery played a role in the case involving the most notoriously corrupt law-enforcement officers in recent Dade history: the so-called Miami River Cops. The case began following a 1985 police raid on a drug boat docked on the river. As the officers stormed the cocaine-laden vessel to steal the cargo, the six men guarding the drugs leaped overboard. Three of them drowned. The ensuing probe resulted in the arrest, suspension, or punishment of more than 100 officers. Before their untimely death in the Miami River, the dopers had just finished a fine repast A their last supper, as it turned out -- at an establishment called La Mar Seafood on SW Eighth Street (now a Chinese restaurant). The attorneys who prosecuted the case dined at the restaurant on the anniversary of the deaths to commemorate the event.
Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only the Busboy
In many cultures, sated diners burp heartily to show their appreciation for a good meal. In Miami you blow somebody away.
Okay, maybe it's not quite a tradition, but the aromas of food and gunpowder have commingled fairly frequently in recent Miami history. The now-defunct Neon Leon's in South Miami experienced not one but two shootings on its premises. The first, in 1980, claimed the life of the restaurant's co-owner, Lionel Fernandez. He was shot to death outside the place. Six months later DEA agents killed a fugitive during a stakeout there. (Neon Leon's closed a couple of years later and has since been revived as more than a half-dozen different eateries; it's now Chilango's Mexican Restaurant.)
In 1982 an argument at the erstwhile Roger's on the Green on Key Biscayne also resulted in death. Ricardo "Monkey" Morales -- confessed murderer and terrorist, with links to the CIA, the FBI, the DEA, the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, and the Venezuelan secret police A met private detective Orlando Torres at Roger's, located in the building that now houses the Missing Link Restaurant. Morales was reportedly drunk, or well on his way, when he began hassling Torres. The private eye called Morales a "maric centsn" -- Spanish for faggot -- and as Morales reached for a gun in an ankle holster, Torres blasted a bullet into Morales's brain. The shooter was never charged with a crime because the killing was deemed an act of self-defense.
With some dextrous use of a gun in 1989, one unhinged waiter almost singlehandedly nipped in the bud what has since become a South Beach gastronomic plague: Italian restaurants. Rafael Enrique Rivera, a 59-year-old waiter at the Washington Avenue restaurant Osteria del Teatro, had developed a strong dislike for chef Diego Rachetto. Rivera decided to resolve the hostility. He walked into Osteria del Teatro one evening and emptied several rounds from two different guns into Rachetto as the chef was toasting a seafood supplier. Rivera waited patiently by the pastry cart for the cops to arrive. Needless to say, the shooting put a damper on business. But Miami's memory being as short as it is, business eventually picked up again, and the place's extraordinary success has been credited with spawning other Italian restaurants on the Beach, which now number in the tens of thousands.
