Biscayne Park, FL police told to frame black people, probe found
The indictment was damning enough: A former police chief of Biscayne Park and two officers charged with falsely pinning four burglaries on a teenager just to impress village leaders with a perfect crime-solving record.
But the accusations revealed in federal court last month left out far uglier details of past policing practices in tranquil Biscayne Park, a leafy wedge of suburbia just north of Miami Shores.
Records obtained by the Miami Herald suggest that during the tenure of former chief Raimundo Atesiano, the command staff pressured some officers into targeting random black people to clear cases.
“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 burglaries,” one cop, Anthony De La Torre, said in an internal probe ordered in 2014. “They were basically doing this to have a 100% clearance rate for the city.”
In a report from that probe, four officers — a third of the small force — told an outside investigator they were under marching orders to file the bogus charges to improve the department’s crime stats. Only De La Torre specifically mentioned targeting blacks, but former Biscayne Park village manager Heidi Shafran, who ordered the investigation after receiving a string of letters from disgruntled officers, said the message seemed clear for cops on the street.
“The letters said police were doing a lot of bad things,” Shafran told the Herald. “It said police officers were directed to pick up people of color and blame the crimes on them.”
Beyond the apparent race targeting, the report — never reviewed in village commission meetings — described a department run like a dysfunctional frat house. It outlines allegations that the brass openly drank on duty, engaged in a host of financial shenanigans and that the No. 2 in command during the period, Capt. Lawrence Churchman, routinely spouted racist and sexist insults.
Amid the probe, Atesiano abruptly resigned in 2014. Afterward, there was a stark change in village crime-busting statistics.
During his roughly two-year tenure as chief, 29 of 30 burglary cases were solved, including all 19 in 2013. In 2015, the year after he left, records show village cops did not clear a single one of 19 burglary cases.
Village leaders say they have since overhauled the department, calling the ousted police chief’s actions “appalling.”
Atesiano, 52, has strongly denied the allegations. He pleaded not guilty in the federal case and is now awaiting trial on charges of civil-rights violations. Two of his former officers, Raul Fernandez and Charlie Dayoub, also have pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial. Sources say they are cooperating against their one-time boss.
The federal case doesn’t raise allegations of racial profiling, but records show the false charges were filed against a black Haitian-American teen identified only as T.D. in the indictment. Whether or how many other blacks might have been targets is unclear. State and local arrest records differ somewhat, but of the 30 burglary arrests documented in 2013 and 2014, nearly all were of black males.
But at least one other case is under review in an ongoing investigation: the arrest of a black transient man, Erasmus Banmah, 35, who was charged with five vehicle burglaries on the same day in February 2014. Each was dropped immediately by prosecutors when Biscayne Park cops failed to cooperate, records show.
Commanders dispute allegations
Both Atesiano and Churchman, who was not named in the indictment, deny pressuring officers to make unwarranted arrests or to target blacks. In 2014, they disputed the officers’ allegations to the village’s outside investigator and they repeated that defense to the Herald.
The former chief argues he demanded diligence from his officers, not illegal actions, His attorney pointed blame at Atesiano’s former underlings for any resulting problematic arrests.
“Encouraging, or even demanding, that public employees raise their performance levels to meet the citizens’ expectations is not an invitation for those public employees to cut corners or falsify documents,” his defense attorney, Richard Docobo, told the Herald.
Ana Garcia, who served as village manager when Atesiano was first elevated to chief in January 2013, said the federal charges of framing a teen conflicted with the chief’s reputation in the village. She left the role before Shafran took over while Atesiano quietly stepped down in April 2014.
“Everyone thought highly of him,” Garcia said. “This comes as a total shock, not only to me but everyone in the community.”
Biscayne Park’s little police department has been on the radar of state and federal prosecutors for years.
With a population of just over 3,000 residents and less than one square mile in size, the little village has produced an outsized share of scandals, most surrounding its cops.
