MIAMI – Art Acevedo stood by his attorney, John Byrne, on Thursday night outside of Miami City Hall after a meeting determined his fate. He read a statement, his voice cracking as he fought back tears.
Miami commissioners voted unanimously to accept City Manager Art Noriega’s recommendation to terminate Acevedo after suspending him as police chief on Monday.
“I lament the fact that I will not be able to continue serving here. I want to reiterate that there are many quality men and women in this department and I want them to know that I admire them and will continue to support them and to fight for them,” Acevedo said.
Acevedo had endured a meeting peppered with political theatrics that included a commissioner’s capricious request to replay a video and another commissioner’s attack on his colleague’s character.
Noriega focused on Acevedo’s alleged mistakes for over five hours. During the meeting, witnesses talked about Acevedo’s use of expletives, minor damage to his car, the hiring of a Houston officer, and support of a COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
Miami politics are nothing like what Acevedo experienced as the chief of the California Highway Patrol and the police departments in Austin and Houston.
When Noriega hired Acevedo with the support of Mayor Francis Suarez, Acevedo was known for standing up for what he believed. He stood for gun control after the 2018 Parkland massacre. He supported police reform when Black Lives Matter activists demanded it after George Floyd was killed.
Suarez and Noriega hired Acevedo to implement reforms. On Sept. 24th, Acevedo wrote a memo accusing three of the five commissioners of interfering with a police internal affairs investigation, of manipulating the department’s budget to sabotage his plans for reform, and of other public misconduct.
Byrn said Acevedo’s termination was directly linked to the Sept. 24th memo and nothing more.
Noriega named Manuel “Manny” Morales — who had applied for Acevedo’s job and testified against Acevedo at the meeting — as the department’s interim chief.