Police in Miami Gardens, Florida accused of policy and practice of civil rights violations

A new report has surfaced, alleging that police in Miami Gardens, Florida have an illegal policy of stopping and investigating black males without any reason to suspect that many of those men are engaged in any sort of criminal activity.  In the report, covering investigative reporting by the TV network Fusion, several interviews were released, including one where an anonymous man, identifying himself as a Miami Gardens police officer, reported that his supervisor told him to stop all black males between the ages of 15 and 30, to investigate them for criminal activity.  The report indicates that just 110,754 people live in Miami Gardens, yet since 2008, police have stopped and investigated 56,922 people who were not arrested.  The report also indicates that Fusion uncovered numerous instances of police falsifying official reports, even claiming to have stopped and questioned people who were actually in jail at the time of the alleged stops, possibly in an effort to boost their stop numbers to meet quotas.  Apparently, officers even wrote reports identifying a 99-year-old man and a 5-year-old child as suspicious persons.

Fusion’s investigation began after a news story made national headlines, indicating that Miami Gardens police arrested a 28-year-old man 67 times for trespassing, despite the fact most of those arrests were made while he was at work.  That story revealed surveillance video footage of police arresting the man while he was stocking shelves at the gas station where he was employed.  Apparently, after arresting the man for trespassing, while he was clearly working in the store, the arresting officers falsified a report about the arrest and said the man was illegally loitering in the parking lot of the gas station.

See more information about reports from Fusion and the Miami Herald, at: The Atlantic and the Miami Herald.