A former Florida police chief is awaiting trial for instructing officers to pin open crimes on “anybody black walking through our streets.”
The Miami Herald reports that ex-Biscayne Park police chief Raimundo Atesiano gave orders to officers in 2014 to charge random black people with any open crimes in order to keep a 100% crime clearance rate in the suburban city.
In an interview conducted as a part of a 2014 internal problem, officer Anthony De La Torre relayed what he was told by the department’s leaders: “‘If they have burglaries that are open cases that are not solved yet, if you see anybody black walking through our streets and they have somewhat of a record, arrest them so we can pin them for all the burglary.’ They were basically doing this to have a 100% clearance rate for the city.”
Three other officers interviewed as a part of that probe told an investigator that Atesiano and other commanders said to frame people so their stats would look more impressive. One of them, Omar Martinez, said he refused, telling investigators that he told commanders, “I will not arrest an innocent person in order to make the department look good.”
Atesiano, who denies directing officers to target innocent black people, resigned as the 2014 probe was being conducted. The following year, the department failed to solve any of the 19 burglary cases put in front of it.
In addition to officer’s testimony, prosecutors cite a case in which officers under Atesiano’s command framed a 16-year-old black teen for four different burglaries while “knowing that there was no evidence and no lawful basis to support such charges.” Atesiano denies the charges but resigned from the force during the initial probe.
Atesiano and two other former officers have been formally charged with abuse of power.