Eastern Shores’ Dirty Little Secret
By Karin Kimball
The armed and dangerous in North Miami Beach take no prisoners – not even in Eastern Shores.
There was a shooting in North Miami Beach’s affluent, East-of-the-Boulevard neighborhood on Wednesday night at approximately 10:30 pm. Yep, they “Pulled Out the Stick” in Eastern Shores! And, it was gang related! And, it’s apparently a secret! A major crime scene involving gang members, an Eastern Shores resident, and multiple weapons, went down. Yet, no press release was issued that I know of. Consider this your press release then.
On Wednesday night, NMB Police Officers were doing surveillance near the residence of a burglary suspect that LIVES in Eastern Shores. I understand that this person was being staked out because he is a suspect in the burglaries of multiple residences in Eastern Shores. During the stakeout, three gang members pulled up in a LEXUS (damn, I wonder how they paid for that ride?) and the burglary suspect fired a .45 caliber gun (five shots were heard) at the Lexus. I wonder what they were fighting about?
The three gang members were apparently from Uleta Park. After the shots were fired, they took off in the Lexus and a chase ensued. I heard the Lexus floored it at 100 mph all the way to North Miami, pursued safely by NMB police in unmarked cars, and they were apprehended in North Miami – along with multiple 9 mm weapons found in the Lexus. I don’t have to think to deeply to figure that one out.
If this weren’t shocking enough, our Police Department lost three seasoned police officers in the past three weeks. With pension negotiations being a hot mess, our veteran officers are taking a hike and leaving our city with bare bones police staffing. I understand that there has been talk that the Street Crimes Unit might be disbanded to fill in the staffing gaps, and if that is not enough, they might pull detectives to fill in the holes. No Gang Unit? No Street Crimes Unit? No detectives? This is a catastrophic dismantling of the most important asset of our city government – our Police Department.
Again, I present compelling evidence that we need to value our Police Department. Council needs to take into consideration the high level of violent crime (shootings) in our city and the risks that these officers take to protect our citizens every single day.
Wake up Eastern Shores residents (and Council members) and smell the coffee. Or better yet, wake up and smell the gunpowder.
Karin Kimball
“Crime Reporter”
I told you all so a long time ago: “When we go down the toilet, we all go together.” No silly guardhouse is going to protect Eastern Shores from what is happening to our city; and even if it did, what person with any means would want to be associated with us? Sooner or later, the problems that affect us outside the gate, will affect those inside of it. But now that the “guarded ones” are experiencing what we have been experiencing for some time now, maybe the dismantling of our PD will stop. BTW, great eye-opening report.
I left one little important tidbit out – the shooter (the Eastern Shores resident) was caught at his home.
Stellar reporting. If you live in South Florida you will be impacted by great weather, spectacular night life, world class restaurants, and…crime. It goes with the territory.
Karin, nice report except you are starting to sound like a spokesperson for the police union.
Fact
1. Not one NMB police officer has suffered any pay cut.
2. NMB police officers, on average, make over $80,000 per year. Sargeants, and there are 26 of them, make about $100,000 a year.
3. Each NMB police officer receives over $50,000 a year in a pension contribution from the City of NMB.
4. Over 1/4 of all NMB police officers are in the DROP …meaning they have already retired and are collecting both a retirement check and a full paycheck. After they retire, they no longer contribute anything to their retirement plan even though they are still earning a full paycheck and they receive 8% interest on their retirement savings paid for by NMB taxpayers.
5. Police, like other professions, move on and either retire or double dip on a pension benefit and find a job somewhere else.
6. The reason we do not have more police officers on our force patrolling the streets is because the police union does not want to make any meaningful pension concessions, making it too expensive to hire new police officers.
7. Every dollar collected in property taxes in the entire city of NMB is still not enough to cover the pension obligations of the city’s employees, including police officers who have a larger share of the pension pie.
8. Most NMB police officers do not whine and complain about their paychecks or their morale. They know they have a good thing and they keep quiet about it. A small group of low-information, low intellect police officers , who generally make the most money of all, will never be satisfied and will con people like you into being their spokesperson. Don’t fall for it.
Even if she or anyone else does not “fall for it”, the fact is that the crime rate in our city, specifically gang related shootings, is increasing dramatically. How many gang related shootings have they had in Coral Gables, Aventura or Bal Harbor lately? While I am well aware we are no Aventura and certainly no Bal Harbor, I certainly don’t want to be another Miami Gardens or another Opa Locka. We have dropped the ball somewhere; it may not be on salaries or benefits, but something has definitely changed, and not for the better.
Hey Hate to say It,
The main reason we have gang related shootings and other crime in NMB is not because we do not have enough police officers, it’s because of the demographics of the city. Unfortunately we have many single parent families with no father figures to guide the teenagers that are doing most of the crime. Increasing our police force might help to catch the occasional suspect committing a crime, but unfortunately, most police arrive after a crime has already been committed. Obviously police cannot be everywhere in our city and can’t be blamed for the low moral standards of the parents that allow their teenagers to roam the streets. Its more of a socio-economic issue and a lack of prosecution by the state attorney than it is a lack of police officers.
Oh My God.
I am in no one’s pocket. I don’t even know the name of our police union. I can have own opinion without being in someone’s pocket. Or, are you implying that I cannot have my own opinion because I am a woman? Because your remarks are discriminatory, to say the least.
I am a single mother. I have two very successful and beautiful children and I raised them without a “father figure”. I take offense to your statement about single parents.
Our police department, when better staffed, had a successful gang unit that was able to bring down numerous gangs and make our city safer.
“Occasional suspect committing a crime?” Have you looked around you?
Karin, the same thing happened when I expressed an opinion that someone else didn’t agree with. All of a sudden I was “in someone’s pocket.” Apparently, that’s the insult du jour. Don’t even concern yourself with that silly accusation. I would agree with his comment to some degree regarding “demographics,” but only the extent that NMB has allowed the physical decay of our city by its lack of code enforcement and lack of development. As a result, property values stay down, regardless of the market, and that leaves the door wide open for the criminal element to move right in. Gangs have found a welcome home in NMB, and our city’s biggest loss was the Gang Unit. Most residents have no clue how valuable this specialized unit was, but if they’re paying any attention at all, they have got to notice the rise in gang activity since the unit was disbanded. Until we have a real code enforcement team with the power to clean up the city and we get back a gang unit (although Jodi Schuster will be impossible to replace), we will continue to slide further and further into perpetual ghettohood.
Karin,
I think you missed the Dukes point. While you can take pride in raising your two wonderful children, it’s obvious that many other single parents in NMB, NM, Miami Gardens, and other areas do not take any pride in raising theirs as they allow them to run the streets, don’t hold them accountable for their actions, and seem to have other issues to deal with other than keeping an eye on their kids.
Do you really think the kids in gangs come from well rounded families?
Also I think you missed the point on the pocket comment. The Duke didn’t say you were in anyone’s pocket but simply cautioned you into not allowing certain NMB police officers to shape your views on staffing of the police department when the issues of staffing, as I understand it, are directly related to the cost of hiring new ones within the current salary and pension costs that new hires would incur without compensation reform.
Really? REALLY? Is D-E-M-O-G-R-A-P-H-I-C-S how you spell “it’s the blacks the Haitians and the Latinos” in racist code? Must be nice to be a duke; how do you fight crime in your duchy? Do you only allow perfect parents who never ever split up? Everything is so perfect that no proactive police work is necessary, and everybody lives happily ever after…
Hey hate to Say it,
Please tell the readers the Lilly White area of Broward County you live in and why you chose to drive outside the County to get there….could it be that NMB doesn’t have the “demographics” you want to live around?
As you put it….Haters will be Haters, right?
I cannot find the reply icon to Mr. Smith’s reply so I will have to reply to myself. Woody, if you think I am a police officer who lives in Broward County, you could not be more mistaken. I think you understood the reverse of what I meant with my comment. I do indeed live here, I love it here, and I hate to see what is happening to us. The “Duke’s” over-simplistic answer to our crime problem is a joke, and that is what I was trying to point out.
Duke,
This was NOT an article about police salaries or pension. This was an article about the appropriate size and scope of a police department.
How do you feel about having 15% of your police force fired, and what role did those firings play in the increased number of shootings? Are you aware that these firings required the elimination of all of your specialized units, units designed to proactively address crime, and what role does this play in the issue Karin raises? THAT is the topic.
NMB Cop,
The reason that 15% of our best police officers were layed off was due to the unsustainability of the extremely expensive pension contributions. The police were offered a choice in either revising their pensions and everyone keeping their jobs or keep the extreme pensions and the city manager was forced to lay-off some so that the total pension load did not remain unsustainable.
Unfortunately, the police union rejected concessions and the manager was forced to lay-off our best police officers because of union seniority rules. Remaining are the retired in the DROP, an overabundance of expensive sargeants with no one to supervise, and those like you who whine about how you have been picked on and beat-down even though you haeb’t given up a dime.
Sure the special units were disbanded because the city could not fund them due to the explanation given above. You blame the Mayor and Council, high information residents blame the police union.
Once pension concessions are arrived at, allowing more entry level police officers to be hired, our crime and gang activity will decrease.
Duke of Marin, do you hire entry level people to run your business?
Karin,
If you had a business, would you hire people who demanded compensation and a pension package you could not afford to pay? and if you paid it, and you knew you could not afford it and it would put you out of business, would you still hire those extremely expensive hires?
I own a business and I can give you that answer if you can’t figure it out yourself.
Karin, if you had a business and you were looking to hire additional people to run it and the only people you could hire would be extremely expensive new hires that would put you out of business, would you still hire them? ..or would you like to have the option of hiring new employees at a lower compensation level so you can afford to actually hire them?
I own a business and I can provide you the answer to that question if you cannot figure it out yourself.
Bill and Woody,
If you had a business and every other competitor was paying their workers $20 per hour and you only paid yours $10, who do you think would have the best, brightest and most qualified workers working for them, you or your competitors? And if your competitor has better and brighter employees, how long until your business is run out-of-business by the competition?
NMB officers are not asking to be paid more than any of their peers. We only expect to be paid what our peers in surrounding agencies get paid. No more, no less. Is that not fair?
Bill the Cat and Woody,
No officer demands anything upon being hired and we don’t hire “extremely expensive hires”. Despite what someone told you, it doesn’t work that way in this career. I’ll dummy proof the process for you. The city puts out a hiring notice, including the benefits and salary they’ll receive. Then that officer decides whether or not they like that salary and benefits and they apply if they want. The city can offer new hires minimim wage with a 401k, if they want to come work here for that, their decision, right?!? Or would they prefer to go to any agency in this tri-county area and receive an honest salary, pension, benefits and take home car. As business owners, is this the way you run your business? Scary if so. Pension reform could have been completed by now and you would know that if you attended ANY contract meeting for the past year and a half. But like someone else mentioned, unless your Charles Lobe, YOU weren’t there. Get your facts straight Jack and stop relying on what someone-told-you. Good thing Mrs. Kienzle allows this forum so you can educate yourself on the happenings in this city.
Now putting that aside, as business owners what would you do in this real-life scenario?
1) City wants two million in concessions to avoid 17 layoffs.
2) Union offers 1.2 million in concessions and the remaining $800,000 in concessions will occur through attrition over the next year or two
3) City decides they want the 2 million and they lay off 17 officers.
Now, as a business owner would you take the 1.2 million in savings and the rest through attrition over the next year and lay no one off? Would you take the 1.2 million and only lay-off 7 employees? Or would you just lay off the 17? After a few years you see your business getting destroyed and you came to grips that the lay-offs were only to show how big your balls were. At this point would you scramble to hire the people back at a competitive salary and benefits? Scramble to hire the people back at a salary and benefits much less than your competitor hoping the employee was desperate enough to work for you? Let your business continue to crumble?
High information residents? Are you implying that only the same 10 people are brilliant? Are you assuming that all of the of residents of this city are low information? Living, walking or driving through the streets of our lovely city is much more informative than going to a council meeting.
Hey Karin,
Don’t be so defensive. Maybe the Duke was including you in the high-information resident category. One look at the voter turnout this past election might clue you in on who is high information resident is and who the low information ones are.
To me, anyone who cares about the things you mentioned that are important to you, would take the time to vote for the right people to make it happen.
And you sound like the guy we are investigating
What’s your address smuck!
Duke, your statements are incorrect and only reflect on your low-information ignorance.
On another note, please pay your taxes DUKE. I have a huge house in a nice gated community where the crime rate is almost ZERO percent. I love the cops in my city. 🙂
Duke of Marin,
Greetings, please allow me to educate YOU on some “FACTS”. For starters, this is the correct spelling for the word “Sergeant”. Secondly, there are only 11 Sergeants in the entire department. This year alone, we have had 4 Sergeants retire/ leave for other agencies and possibly more are leaving in the near future. As far as the Sergeant salaries, 2 out of the 11 make about 75,000 a year and the other 9 are making in the lower 90’s. Not to mention that the step raises have been frozen for Sergeants and Officers for quite some time.
As far as your comments on the current crime trends in our city and the state of affairs in our Police department. You cannot ignore the fact that we have lost a quarter of our Police department and simply blaming it on “parenting” and demographics is not going to cut it. We want to be a proactive police department, not a reactive one. And yes, our morale is down. Not just a few people, EVERYONE!! However, we still come out day in and day out and provide stellar services to our citizens. Is it our jobs? Yes. Do we want a cookie? No. Do we want what was promised and deserve? Yes. Have WE suffered enough? Yes.
Oh and BTW, I’ve been to pretty much every single contract negotiation meeting since the beginning. So unless you’re Charles Lobe, please do not post your comments as if they were factual statements in regards to the contract meetings, since you were not there. I could go on and on about crime in our city, but the numbers speak for themselves. And numbers do not lie.
It time we put our pride aside and accept what has been presented before us and strive for a positive solution.
Thank you for reading.
Haters gotta hate. Right, Duke?
Duke,
You are a liar and a hater…and I’ve learned that the best way to deal with liars and haters like you is to demand facts from them. So please tell everyone exactly what pension reform ideas the city presented and that we turned down that resulted in the layoffs. Tell us what they proposed to do with the multiplier, the DROP, our contribution or retirement age that we turned down. Since you know everything and since those who disagree with you are “low information”, please amaze us all with your vast knowledge on the subject.
Can you please explain to everyone what the DROP is? I keep hearing that its a method that allows police officers to receive double pay for something like ten years????? Who gets that anywhere or is this just a gov’mt thing?
Ramona,
DROP stands for Deferred Retirement Option Plan. Basically, this is how it works. After 20 years on the force, a police officer qualifies for a pension. The pension is around 60% of his salary (20 years x 3%). Now, at 20 years he could retire and begin to draw a pension. Or, he could choose to continue working and add to his pension. Say he worked another 8 years for a total of 28, then his pension would be around 84% of his salary (28 years x 3%). Or, he could enter the DROP. If he enters the DROP then his pension is frozen at 60%. He continues working and receiving the same salary. He and the city both stop contributing to his pension. His 60% pension pays into an account and he accrues that money until he leaves. He can remain in the DROP up to but no more than 8 years.
If an officer retired from NMB and began to draw a pension, and then went to work for another police department or at any other job…then he will get a pension and a salary at the same time. Or he can retire and enter the DROP and do the same thing. The DROP benefits the city a number of ways. It allows them to retain experienced officers, it allows them to cease making pension contributions on that officer’s behalf and it stops the officer’s pension from accruing above the minimum 60%. Also, in years like this, the city actually earns money on the officer’s pension by investing it and keeping the interest–minus what the officer receives.
Wow!!!…get a retirement check of 60% of my salary after only 20 years and then and still collect a full paycheck for another eight. Wish I could get that where I work. I’m lucky to have a 401k which my company only contributes 5% of my pay.
But answer me one thing. How does the city make money on the police officers pension when they contribute most of the money into it? Isn’t the city just getting back some of the money they paid into it on the policemans behalf.? I wouldn’t have a problem with the city making some of their money back, would you?
Ramona,
If you like our pension then you could have (and should have) applied for the job when it was posted. That said, all that glitters is not gold. To earn that pension I worked a lot of odd and ever-changing hours that included night shifts and holidays away from my family. A lot of stress. A lot of greasy drive-thru food shoved down my throat while sitting in a patrol car. I’ve been punched, kicked and spat upon. I’ve confronted armed subjects, rushed into burning buildings and been choked by the thick smoke filled with who knows what chemicals that may harm my health down the road. I’ve been forced to come in close contact with arrestees infected with communicable diseases, or arrestees covered in feces and urine. I risk catching a deadly disease each time I stick my hand into the pockets of an IV drug user where I may get poked with a dirty needle. I constantly sweat my ass off because I am forced to wear unGodly hot body armor for fear of being shot to death at any moment…
…and that is why I get a pension and you get only a 401K.
That said, as a DROP member my pension pays into a fund and the fund earns interest. I get 8% interest and the city keeps the rest for themself. This year, the fund has earned more than 19%. I get 8%, the city keeps the rest. The city has earned 11% on my money so far this year.
Don’t be a hater, Ramona. We have too many haters on this site already. I am not complaining about my job and I am happy with the choice I made, but at the same time I object to anyone who makes it seem as if I am living a cushy life, high on the hog and collecting a big fat pension for no reason. I earn my pension…and then some!
On a different note than what everyone else fixated one:
a lethally armed burglar was being watched, allowed to act as he pleased until what happened? This?
I don’t see how the number of police officers on the force could have changed the outcome of this scenario.
What kind of danger were the police putting the residents of eastern shores in by allowing such a person to walk freely?
So many questions around this one.
How long have police been surveying the suspect? During that time had any of the related times taken place? Did police have proof of the suspects guilt? What were they surveying him for? Did they know he was armed? Did they know of his affiliation with the gang that came to kill him? Had they tapped his phone lines? Etc.
Thanks for the press release but it just opened up a lot more questions.
That there are too few police doesn’t mean the people running the department are necessarily making good use of the resources they still have at their disposal.
related crimes* not times.
Hypothetically if they had been watching the suspect for a while they may have even witnessed him commit an act of crime.
Prem,
How would more officers on the force prevent this and other crime? Easy. NMBPD used to have a gang unit who did nothing all day, all week, all month and all year but arrest and imprison gang members. The elimination of the gang unit means gang members are now free to walk the streets without fear of a gang unit stalking them and arresting them. Three of the four participants in this shoot out were gang members. If we still had a gang unit, these three likely would have been in jail rather than walking the streets free. Had they been in jail, the shooting never could have happened. We used to have a street crimes unit. Now we don’t. The street crimes unit would likely have taken the burglar off of the streets so he would not have been there that night to shoot it out with the gang members. That is how police affect the crime rate allover the world. NMB is not unique.
The firings required the elimination of the specialized units, and the specialized units were the only officers free to proactively address crime issues. Road patrol officers do nothing all day but respond to calls for service. Your cell phone gets stolen; a road cop takes the report. You crash; a road cop writes the report. But the gang unit was free to focus only on gangs. The street crimes unit was free to focus only on street criminals. These units are gone. Criminals are dumb, but they’re not stupid. They see this. They see that no one is following them around like they once did. They see the plain clothes street crimes cops are not driving up and down their streets like they once did. Or were you of the misguided opinion that criminals just walk around completely oblivious to their surroundings? If so, think again. They pay attention and they notice that NMB is now open for business, and criminals are free to walk the streets out in the open and do pretty much whatever they want to do…and now that even holds true for Eastern Shores, where we have not had a shooting like this in 25 or more years.
Stick your head in the sand and keep pretending that all this gun violence is all just a coincidence, that it has nothing to do with the layoffs, but do so at your own peril.
And please allow me to add, Prem…all of the questions you asked about whether or not they had tapped his phone or whether they knew the affiliation of the gang members who came to kill him…that is why more officers on the force makes a difference, because that all takes time and man hours to accomplish and we simply don’t have the manpower right now. When I started in NMB more than 20 years ago, there was more than 100 police officers. Now we have barely 90. We had more police officers 20 years ago, when NMB was a mainly Jewish retirement community. As Duke pointed out, the demographics have changed since then. We barely have enough to man the road…and the very same unit that did such great work in this case will soon be on the chopping block if we have any more retirements. Sad, but true.
A Prediction.
A new city manager has been hired and it won’t take more than a few months to go by before the knuckleheads in the police union starts telling everyone what a POS and cop hater she is.
A prediction.
Bert is making predictions about what the union is going to do, yet I predict that Bert has not and will not ever bothered to attend even one single contract negotiation (even though they are open to the public) and even though he has no idea what is actually being said, no idea what is actually being offered and even though he has no clue whether or not the union’s criticisms of this or any other city manager have any validity whatsoever…Bert still thinks the union is wrong because that is Bert’s personal bias and he refuses to let things like facts get in the way of his rationalizations.
While council is sitting around waiting to hire some minimum wage officers, I hope that we don’t have another mass shooting, like the one at the funeral home on West Dixie. No one seems to be listening. There is a huge problem with gangs in this city. If we don’t have the proactive means to defend our citizens, only God knows what will happen. And, then what? What?
Is council expecting everyone to pull out their own stick? Is everyone supposed to consider the prospect of getting a license to carry a concealed weapon because we obviously will have to take care of our own if PD staffing and experience continue to decline.
I wonder how many guns were dropped off by gang members yesterday. Anyone have access to that number?