It’s no secret many Florida police are uneasy about a bill that advanced in Tallahassee yesterday to allow residents to openly carry firearms. In fact, the only reason the Sunshine State is still one of six states prohibiting open gun-toting is because the Florida Sheriffs Association has vigorously opposed such laws in the past.

So it’s not a huge shock that Lt. Javier Ortiz, president of Miami’s police union, lashed out at the proposal last night. What’s raising eyebrows, though, is Ortiz’s argument: namely, that if it passes, militant black activists will use the law to threaten cops.

Ortiz took to Twitter last night to direct his feelings about open-carry at Rep. Matt Gaetz, the Panhandle Republican — along with his dad, Sen. Dan Gaetz — who sponsored the new legislation. Ortiz began with a pretty reasonable complaint:

That tweet echoes the Sheriffs Association’s talking points through the years. Many cops believe that more guns on the street equals more violence.

But then Ortiz banged out this followup:

Say what? Gaetz quickly replied that Ortiz’s critique was in bad taste:

And Gaetz knows something about racially tinged Twitter backlash. This past May, Gaetz found himself in a firestorm after singling out three black legislators and joking that they were responsible for typos in a Democratic court filing.

But Ortiz has an even longer history of making racially dubious remarks. Two months ago, he made national news by slamming a black woman who had filmed an instance of alleged police brutality. He posted screen caps of what he claimed was her Facebook page and accused her of hanging out with “young men with handguns.”

Ortiz has been a loud defender of Officer Darren Wilson, the Ferguson, Missouri police officer who killed Michael Brown. And earlier this year, the union president spread rumors that MPD Assistant Chief Anita Nijay, a black woman, was a Muslim.

Ortiz’s Twitter feed isn’t exactly a bastion of political correctness either. In July, he retweeted this gem:

So what is Ortiz talking about with the Black Panthers? The group has become a favorite fear-mongering tool among right-wing internet types. (Just check out the Black Panthers section at Snopes.com, which has myth-busted recent rumors about everything from Michelle Obama wearing a Panthers shirt to the group plotting 9/11 massacres.)

In fact, the black militant group essentially disbanded by the early 1980s. A loosely affiliated offshoot cropped up in Texas a decade later but hasn’t really spread beyond there. Members of that group did hold an open-carry protest against police brutality earlier this year, but compared to some of the tense showdowns that mostly white open-carry groups have sparked in Texas, it was a tame affair.

So why single out the supposed threat of Black Panthers to police? In a response to New Times, Ortiz didn’t back down from the tweets, but directed his ire at Gaetz for sponsoring the bills:

I don’t believe the Florida Sheriffs Association has endorsed this bill. If that was the case, the Miami FOP’s position is we don’t need open carry on the urban streets of Miami. In some of our areas within the City of Miami where poverty and blight are prevalent, the good residents of that area are threatened on a daily basis with gun violence. They don’t need the bad guys publicly brandishing weapons at them while they commit crimes.We also don’t need cop wannabes (AKA George Zimmermans) putting our communities at risk. Matt Gaetz’s bill is bad in every aspect. #alllivesmatter

Matt Gaetz needs to go on a ride-along in Liberty City. Gaetz is pretty brave on Twitter. It’s different when you’re walking the crime-ridden streets of Liberty City in the late evening. The kids in the neighborhood say that when the streetlights turn on, it’s time to stay inside. Publicly displaying a gun won’t keep you safe. The bad guys on the street will just take it from you.

A man was killed after a shooting involving two Miami-Dade police officers in southwest Miami-Dade County.

Jorge Suarez-Ruiz, 51, was shot by officers after they were called to a home on Southwest 42nd Terrace near Southwest 160th Avenue about 9:40 p.m, on September 16.

“This is a very quiet neighborhood, so hearing those gunshots out of nowhere really shocked us,” neighbor Vilma Obando said.

According to Miami-Dade police, Suarez-Ruiz’s family called for help when he began making verbal threats to harm himself and told officers that he was armed with a gun.

Police said Suarez-Ruiz left the home in a Toyota Camry before officers arrived, but officers found him nearby in his car. Police said Suarez-Ruiz led them back to his home.

When Suarez-Ruiz exited his car, there was a confrontation that led to shots being fired, police said.

According to Obando, at least five shots were fired at the man.

Suarez-Ruiz was pronounced dead at the scene. Police said a gun was recovered nearby.

Neither officer was injured in the shooting. Their names have not been released, but police said one is a 14-year veteran of the Miami-Dade Police Department and the other is a six-year veteran.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating.

NBC Miami brings us word of a Florida woman who flashed a judge during her day in court. Susan Surrette, 54,was arrested on Wednesday for disorderly intoxication. When the judge reading her bond charges asked her what her profession was, she responded that she was an escort and porn star named Kayla Kupcakes.

This is where it takes a bit of a dark turn, as Surrette made some disturbing claims about rough police treatment. To demonstrate, she pointed to different parts of her body, including her chest. So, naturally, she had to lift her shirt to show the judge.

“I’ve been beaten on by police,” Surrette told the judge. “And also, this too,” as she proceeded to lift up her shirt and flash the judge.

Hurley remained cool and collected, while the courtroom let out a collective gasp.

“Okay, well I guess that kind of sums everything up,” said Hurley as Surrette was escorted from the courtroom.

Her bond was set at $100 and the judge also ordered a mental health evaluation. According to NBC Miami, Surrette has been in court 10 times over the past few years for minor offenses.

No word on whether her claims against the police are being investigated. ​Mashable has a very informative piece on police brutality against the mentally ill, and it’s upsetting. Here’s hoping her claims are taken seriously.

Roderick Silva

MIAMI, Fla. — Life doesn’t have a delete button, U.S. District Judge Robert Scola told a former Miami-Dade County police detective as he sentenced the man to three years in prison for aiding and abetting a drug family’s distribution racket.

Roderick Silva, a highly valuable asset for the now-imprisoned Santiesteban family, pleaded guilty in April to protecting the violent pot organization, making him the 21st and possibly last defendant to be convicted in the long-running Miami federal case.

In a court apology, Silva said he is ashamed of the man he was and regrets the actions that put his wife and two children “through six years of heartache, stress and financial ruin.” Twenty friends and family members came to support the 46-year-old former officer at the sentencing.

Silva, who joined the Miami-Dade force in 2003, faced between three and four years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines. Scola sentenced Silva to the minimum 37 months, denying the defense’s request for less jail time.

“We expect better from law enforcement officers,” Scala said, noting that although he accepted Silva’s statement of remorse, the crime was not a single indiscretion but a repetitive one. Silva was also charged with extortion for accepting $1,500 to keep quiet about the drug business, though the charge was dropped by prosecutors as part of a plea agreement between lead prosecutor Pat Sullivan and defense attorney Nathan Diamond.

The plea revolves around Silva’s role in helping the notorious Miami-based organization distribute between 100 and 400 kilos of powerful hydroponically grown marijuana in the Northeast. Silva admitted that he tipped off ringleader Derrick Santiesteban about upcoming Miami-Dade police raids in exchange for hefty payments. Silva, a former narcotics detective, came to know him through his younger brother, David, at coke-snorting parties, according to prosecutors.

“Silva gave Derrick handwritten lists of suspected grow houses, so he could determine if any of [his] were under suspicion or about to be raided,” according to court records. “Derrick would pay [Silva] $1,000 for these lists.”

He also gave the clan tips on how to avoid police and even passed along misinformation to his fellow detectives about the Santiesteban family’s large-scale operation, according to a factual statement filed with the plea agreement.

And, he revealed the locations of rival marijuana grow houses, information the Santiestebans used in home-invasion robberies.

The family members — headed by patriarch Gilberto Sr. and joined by sons Derrick, Gilberto Jr., Alexander and Darvis — were charged along with 16 others over the past three years.

Also among those charged: Silva’s younger brother, David, who was one of the key members.

All of the defendants have been convicted and are serving long prison sentences, including Derrick Santiesteban, who received a life sentence.

Investigators say the Santiesteban clan operated 20 indoor hydroponic marijuana grow houses, yielding at least 1,146 potent pot plants that produced millions of dollars in profits from a distribution network in the Northeast.

Miami-Dade police and FBI agents took down the outfit in 2012 after they began investigating the gang’s murder of a rival doper, Fidel Ruz Moreno.

The group was accused of fatally shooting Ruz in June 2009 after he and others had posed as cops and ripped off about 50 pounds of marijuana from Derrick Santiesteban. He and his wife were packaging the load at their Southwest Miami-Dade home to transport to New York.

Silva, the one-time narcotics detective, reported the murder to Miami-Dade investigators a full day after Ruz’s body was found dead on the street in the Hammocks area — though prosecutors later acknowledged he was not aware of the Santiesteban’s retaliatory plot to kidnap Ruz, which led to his death.

Prosecutors said that after the marijuana robbery at his home, Derrick Santiesteban showed Silva a video-surveillance tape. The police officer proposed that Ruz be arrested. But Santiesteban didn’t like the idea, saying “that he’d pursue it on his own,” according to court records.

Ruz’s kipnapping and murder came up at Silva’s sentencing on Tuesday. Both sides agreed that the former cop, who was relieved of duty last year after being assigned to desk work, should receive a slight break in his punishment because he was not involved in the family’s plot.

The defense requested Silva be placed in a local prison so he could be closer to family.

Written by Jay Weaver and Jenny Luna; originally appeared on the Miami Herald

Police in Miami are taking a page out of the vigilante playbook of many Los Angeles communities in an effort to sabotage the crowdsourced traffic app, Waze.

Members of law enforcement around the nation have voiced fears that Waze, which includes reports of police sightings, complete with time and location, represents a threat to their safety. There may be something to that claim, given reports that a brutal assassination-style slaying of two NYPD officers in the midst of the Eric Garner protests was facilitated via information obtained in the Waze app. Then again, the officers were in full uniform and sitting in a marked car, raising questions about just how much the app contributed to the nevertheless heinous act.

Sgt. Javier Ortiz of the Miami Police Department tells NBC 6 Miami, “It puts us at risk, puts the public at risk, because it’s going to cause more deadly force encounters between law enforcement and suspects.”

According to the news outlet, officers in the city have decided to fight back. “Hundreds of officers downloaded the app to try and steer the data in the wrong direction [by reporting false information on their activity],” the news outlet reports.

This mirrors the actions taken by many angry Angelenos who have grown tired of Waze directing shortcut-seeking driver onto quiet residential streets. These citizens have banded together in recent months in the hope of sabotaging – or at least redirecting – Waze’s crowd-sourced guidance by reporting false congestion in their neighborhoods.

As I wrote at the time, PhD students at Israel’s Technion University proved that it was possible to impact Waze with mountains of noisy data. The problem is, the students then reported the issue to the company, which then patched many of these existing vulnerabilities. Further stacking the deck against the officers, the Technion group relied on a set of algorithms that automated the task of making many thousands of fake Waze accounts and repeatedly reporting traffic congestion. A few hundred police doing so manually is unlikely to have a profound affect on the system which includes more than 50 million users globally.

A Waze spokesperson told CBS Los Angeles at the time, “Fake, coordinated traffic reports can’t come to fruition because they’ll be negated by the next 50 people that drive down the street passively using Waze. Police partners support Waze and its features, including reports of police presence, because most users tend to drive more carefully when they believe law enforcement is nearby.”

Waze users rely on the app’s alerts not only to navigate around traffic congestion, but also to avoid things like speed traps, sobriety checks, and other checkpoints.

Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel was similarly dismissive of the plan, saying, “If someone is suffering mental illness and they want to commit a heinous crime or hunt a deputy or a police officer; they don’t need Waze to do that.”

Google agreed to acquire Waze in 2013 for $1.3 billion precisely because of its crowdsourced data model which results in what many consider the best real-time routing in the market. Early reports indicated that the deal would not draw scrutiny from the FTC but report earlier today from Bloomberg calls into question that decision. With Google’s backing this debate over privacy and safety takes on an even broader context.

Waze wouldn’t be the first Google-owned property to take proactive steps to ensure officer safety. YouTube, along with non-Google platforms Facebook and Twitter, actively warns law enforcement about potential threats posed by its users.

As it stands, it seems unlikely that the Miami officers’ efforts will have much impact on Waze, either in the near-term functionality of its platform or in the company’s broader approach to reporting law enforcement locations. Any change, which is hardly guaranteed, will likely have come at a national level and as a result of regulatory intervention, not at the point of a virtual bayonet.

Written by Michael Carney, posted on Pando

MIAMI — A Florida police officer shot and killed a homeless man at Gibson Park in front of a crowd of children on Thursday.

Antonio Torres, a 20-year veteran of the Miami Police Department, opened fire on Fritz Severe, 46, who was holding a stick. Dozens of children scrambled and ran, some being ushered inside a nearby building.

Miami Police Chief Rodolfo Llanes said police responded to a “violent disturbance” that had been reported when they encountered Severe, although TruthVoice could find no report that Severe had attacked anyone. Llanes confirmed that Torres shot Severe multiple times.

According to a report by the Miami Herald, witnesses on the scene said Severe was a homeless man who often spent time around the nearby post office. One witness, Nichelle Miller, gives an account of what happened.

“The man had a stick in his hand. They could have Tasered him. He was a homeless guy who’s there every morning,”

Miller said Severe didn’t even swing the stick at the Torres before he opened fire, shooting his weapon at least five times. Severe was killed almost instantly.

Stephanie Severance, another eyewitness, indicated Torres used little hesitation in shooting Severe. After Severe pointed the stick at the officer, “The next thing you know, [Officer Torres] shot him. I didn’t know whether to run, duck or hide.”

No children or other bystanders were struck by Officer Torres’s fire. Torres has not been charged for killing Severe.