Guilty!
With its verdict, a federal South Florida jury delivered to Miami voters a hefty dose of what should be eye-opening truth: Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo is a bully who violated the First Amendment rights of two Little Havana businessmen when he tried to shut them down using city resources to harass and damage them.
Thuggish, corrupt behavior from a powerful elected official is costing taxpayers a pretty penny while Carollo — the culprit without the ability to pay huge sums — may not endure much more than a bruised ego and acid indigestion.
But it’s a win, nevertheless.
Despite a multi-attorney defense team, which included former City Commissioner Marc Sarnoff and has cost the city already more than $1.9 million, Carollo’s actions against political opponents were indefensible, and he lost the case. After a prolonged trial that exposed the city’s underbelly, the Fort Lauderdale-based jury of six awarded $63.5 million to his victims. But the voters who enabled the former mayor’s comeback to city politics are another guilty party. There’s a lesson in all this for you: Believe politicians when they show you who they are in the first round. Mistakes at the voting booth are expensive.
AUTHOR: FABIOLA SANTIAGO
Testimony about how Carollo went after businessmen Bill Fuller and Martin Pinilla — dragging code enforcement and police into his political vendetta, night and day — is the stuff of mob fiction.
Another city and its leaders might have found Carollo’s well-known abuse unacceptable and tried to stop it before his excesses got this far and this expensive — but not a chance in the City of Miami.
Carollo & Suarez
Most likely, no one lifted a finger to stop Carollo because he isn’t the only one engaging in scandalous and potentially corrupt behavior in the city.
Recent Miami Herald investigations have called into question how Mayor Francis Suarez operates, in light of the collision between his private consulting business working on behalf of a developer and his power to grant favors at City Hall. And, between his expensive social lifestyle in the company of people who have business before the city — and his failure to disclose gifts and comped VIP access to coveted sporting events.
The Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust has opened an investigation, but what faith can the public have in a body whose actions only amount to a slap in the wrist, if anything at all?
Commission investigators had the chance and did nothing but question Carollo, who simply lied to them even when confronted with video evidence of his night-stalking.
Like Carollo’s actions in Little Havana did in their time, Suarez’s failure to disclose his business relationships to the public merits more expert scrutiny and by law enforcement with subpoena powers.
They aren’t small potatoes.
Carollo and Suarez, once bitter political enemies, are Miami’s most powerful politicians.
For the last couple of years, they’ve acted as if they’ve divided the turf and come to an understanding: You leave me to my grift and I to yours.
And city officials, as the Fuller-Pinilla lawsuit showed, do their bidding without wondering if what they’re being told to do violates the law.
Which might explain why Suarez — who, in a power move, brought celebrity Police Chief Art Acevedo to Miami — let him to fall into the hands of Carollo six months later and be fired. After Acevedo made it clear he wouldn’t go along with Carollo’s harassment of the Little Havana businessmen, Acevedo testified at trial, his days in Miami were numbered.
Now chief of the Aurora police department in Colorado, Acevedo didn’t answer a request for comment on the verdict.
What now?
Moving forward, a bigger question must be asked: Who in law enforcement is minding rowdy Miami City Hall house?
Because even when behavior borders on criminal, the legal watchdogs are hard to find. It’s as if the public corruption unit of the State Attorney’s Office only existed on paper.
Fuller and Pinilla had the fortitude, the resources and the documentation of wrongs to bring on a civil trial — and their lawyers made the correct move asking that it be moved to a jurisdiction outside the realm of Miami politics.
That lack of faith that our local justice system could deliver impartiality, is, in itself, an indictment of the city’s shortcomings.
How can a lawsuit that offers enough proof that Carollo weaponized code enforcement to retaliate against people merit a huge multi-million dollar verdict, but not a criminal indictment?
There’s an important form of justice delivered in a civil-rights-violation verdict such as this one. The victims of a political tormentor were heard and awarded compensatory and punitive damages, although it’s unclear how they will collect. Carollo doesn’t have the money, and although the city is paying his whopping legal fees — and there will be more of them if the case is appealed as expected — the city isn’t named as a defendant.
For actual deterrence to occur, an offending politician must pay the heftier price of jail time.
After all, voters in Miami can’t be trusted to fire him. They’ve shown that even when there’s a worthy opponent, they’ll choose the caricature politician.
For Miami residents, the verdict against Carollo confirms our worst fears: Your taxes and votes are funding his abuse of political power, and only two men cared enough to expose it.
By FABIOLA SANTIAGO/Miami Herald