Miami’s Embattled Top Cop Compared City Leaders to Cuban Dictators
Chief Art Acevedo was a flashy hire when he arrived in Miami six months ago. Now his job is in peril after a series of clashes with city commissioners.


MIAMI — The hiring of Art Acevedo as Miami’s police chief seemed like an ideal match. Chief Acevedo, fresh off a high-profile stint in Houston, brought stature and swagger to a city infatuated with both. And as a Cuban immigrant maintaining law and order in the country’s largest concentration of Cuban Americans, his arrival had an air of celebratory inevitability.

That was six months ago. Now Chief Acevedo is at the center of an archetypal Miami political drama, replete with references to Cuban Communism and corruption, that has roiled City Hall and threatened his job.

Even before he moved to Miami, Chief Acevedo was something of a celebrity police chief, known as an outspoken critic of former President Donald J. Trump — despite being a Republican himself — and as a prominent proponent of police reform, especially toward communities of color and immigrants.

But the Miami imbroglio is not over policy. It is a clash of personalities between an ambitious new outsider and powerful city commissioners miffed over both Chief Acevedo’s surprise appointment and his tendency to say exactly what he thinks....

There is a second meeting planned for Friday afternoon at Miami City Hall as Police Chief Art Acevedo continues a wild feud with Miami commissioners in a battle to save his job.

The commission met on Monday to open these talks about Chief Acevedo, who was hired about five months ago. At that meeting, the commission voted to appoint themselves to an investigatgive committee with subpoena power to examine his appointment and look into his hiring practices.

In a preemptory strike ahead of Monday’s meeting, Acevedo sent an accusatory eight-page memo to Mayor Francis Suarez and City Manager Art Noriega accusing several commissioners of hampering his efforts to reform the police department by eliminating positions and interfering with internal affairs investigations. Commissioners on Monday said these allegations would be investigated by the committee they were forming and scheduled Friday’s follow-up meeting.

Monday’s meeting also turned into a war of words with Commissioner Joe Carollo scrutinizing Acevedo’s background while he worked in Houston and Austin, Texas. At one point, Carollo called Acevedo out for performing as Elvis at an Austin, Texas fundraiser and drew attention to his tight pants. Carollo played a video showing Acevedo dancing the cha-cha-cha at a fundraiser and slapping a woman’s rear with a piece of paper, and another video of him impersonating Elvis Presley dancing the “Jailhouse Rock” in the iconic white jumpsuit....