So come ringside and let's get ready to rrrrrumble.
On June 10 Martinez and his fellow commissioners received the "Manager's Report Regarding Potential Reunification of Miami-Dade Police and Corrections," a slim memorandum that blithely zipped through a consolidation plan in three pages of budgetary analyses, with another seven pages of charts. The term "reunification" was used because the two departments used to be combined. They were divided in 1973. Today the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is a distinct county agency running the jail system that houses inmates convicted of misdemeanor crimes who are incarcerated for a year or less, and those awaiting trial on more serious charges. Miami-Dade is one of the only counties in the state to have such a division of labor between police and corrections departments.
"A Department of Public Safety or similarly named entity would likely house an Administrative Division, a Police Operations Division, and a Jail Operations Division. The Juvenile Assessment Center (JAC) would become a unit of the Jail Operations Division," the report states. A list of jobs that could be consolidated -- meaning eliminated -- was also provided. It looks like the majority of the cuts would come from the corrections side of the equation. Then the report notes: "First year savings could total $3,587,000" with potential for more in years ahead.
So far Martinez likes what he sees. "It looks like there's three million dollars-plus in savings the first year alone, so now it merits looking into," he says, emphasizing this was only a preliminary look at the numbers.
Of course, with the resignation of Miami-Dade County Manager Steve Shiver, who stepped down just days after issuing the report, things are on hold. New Manager George Burgess will have more pressing issues stacked on his desk before he gets around to studying the minutiae of combining two massive and complex agencies. Right now the PD has about 4500 employees and a $400 million budget; corrections comes in at about half that with 2600 employees and a $200 million budget. In addition, the director of corrections, Lois Spears, retired at the end of April. Acting director Charles McRay is in charge for the moment. So this may not be the best time to instigate huge changes.
But Martinez is not giving up. "I'm going to give him [Burgess] a couple of weeks to settle in and then ask him to take a look at it. This is on my front burner."
Front burners can be quite hot, and Martinez may get scorched in the expected political fight -- a predictable one for Miami. Corrections is seen as a "black department," one of the first and few to give blacks a chance at management positions within county government. As such it has been protected by many black commissioners over the years. In fact one former corrections director, Donald Manning, was a confidant and campaign manager for former Commissioner James Burke. (Burke knows a few things about the corrections system; he's currently serving a 27-month sentence in federal prison for bribery and money-laundering.) Anti-merger advocates will be turning for help to Commissioner Dorrin Rolle, who sits on the public safety committee with Martinez. (Rolle could not be reached for comment.)
Clearly Martinez, a Cuban and former Miami-Dade cop, is treading into forbidding territory. Cory Barney, president of the Organization of Minority Corrections Officers (OMCO), is already denouncing Martinez's plan as an attempt to steal power from blacks and transfer it to the Latinos in corrections and the police department. "When we start talking about letting them [police] control the hiring, pretty soon we'll look like the police." That is, not a lot of black faces in corrections.
"I don't see a 'black' department," Martinez muses. "I see a county department." And, he adds, his job is to safeguard the public's cash. At the same time he says he's not naive and knows how this will be perceived. "But who's to say the next director of public safety won't be an African American?"
Meanwhile Barney rounded up roughly 100 members of OMCO to pack the commission chambers during the June 10 public safety committee meeting, all wearing T-shirts emblazoned with "Say No to Consolidation" slogans. In the past the police department neglected corrections, he alleges. "We had the hand-me-down vehicles, the hand-me-down weapons from police," Barney complains. "We were the stepchildren in terms of the needs and wants of the department."
Why would Martinez enter into this racially divisive fray? What could he gain from a difficult, if not improbable, proposal like this? He says it's simply about saving money: "I'm looking to streamline anywhere we can trim fat." But he's also made it clear he's fed up with problems in corrections. When he found out in April that building officials declared the main jail, Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, so dilapidated it might have to be closed for repairs, he was apoplectic. "It's been going on for years and we just found out?" he told me at the time. "That's just ineptitude!" The prospect of moving thousands of inmates to temporary quarters is the kind of reputation-staining nightmare that might make a commissioner think politically impractical thoughts.
And the timing may be right to advance such a plan. The will to defend the corrections department has waned over the years as corruption and caustic race relations fomented by OMCO and its rival Hispanic group, the Hispanic Association of Corrections Officers (now morphed into the United Correctional Officers Foundation -- UCOF), have eaten away at morale. The most recent scandal to break surface was the near mutiny inside the internal-affairs bureau, where investigators complained bitterly about the chief in charge of the unit and her command staff and how they manipulated cases for political reasons. Eventually that captain was transferred.
"This potential merger makes sense," Ed Nieves, UCOF's president, wrote in the organization's newsletter, All Points Bulletin. "With today's budget restraints ... this may be the fiscally responsible thing to do. Corrections line staff employees will have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Unfortunately I can't say the same for the corrections administration. I'm sure it will be severely streamlined."
But Barney and his OMCO union employees might have an unlikely ally in the anti-merger fight -- Miami-Dade Police Director Carlos Alvarez. "This is very preliminary," he cautions in reference to the manager's report. "In reality we have to be careful. You have two large organizations that have existed as separate entities for 30-some years. A lot more work has to be done before anybody rushes into this."
That's obvious. And although he's not saying it, it's likely Alvarez is not jackrabbit-eager to jump into bed with corrections. He's already said the jail system has problems, so he probably sees only the downside to his department taking on those liabilities. After all, he's worked hard to keep free from the kind of institutionalized corruption that plagues corrections.
