When Luis Cabrera assumed the position of police chief in the Village of Biscayne Park following a former chief’s arrest over corruption charges, he told the community that it was his mission to repair the village’s reputation.
Six years later, it’s clear that he has only made it worse.
Village manager Chris Truitt revealed last month that Cabrera had been using his position as police chief to hire certain law enforcement personnel without the proper background checks required by village policies and procedures. After being presented with the knowledge of his actions – which led to the hiring of individuals with criminal histories and shady records, who would have otherwise been denied employment – Cabrera chose to resign from his position with the Biscayne Park Police Department (BPPD).
(LinkedIn/@christruitt)
Luis Cabrera, Biscayne Park’s now former chief of police, was placed on administrative leave in May and resigned soon after.
That leaves the village of 3,000 in a sticky spot, as it is again facing the challenge of hiring a new police chief – one who can be trusted to lead with integrity. According to village code, the manager is responsible for leading that charge.
Truitt told the Biscayne Times that he had no additional comment beyond what’s been posted on the village’s website regarding the situation surrounding Cabrera. The last available update at press time had occurred May 15.
Deputy chief Mark Steele has been appointed acting chief in the meantime.
Playing Favorites
(Facebook/Village of Biscayne Park)
Multiple officers have been wrongfully hired in recent years to work for the Biscayne Park Police Department without background checks.
Cabrera was first placed on administrative leave April 15 after Truitt learned of the potential issues with pre-employment background checks. Though Truitt’s subsequent online update does not clarify how many individuals were wrongfully hired under Cabrera’s leadership, only three names were given as examples: Benny Lee, Jose Castro and his son, Chris Castro.
Truitt noted that Lee had a total of 12 internal affairs investigations brought against him by law enforcement agencies throughout his career and was fired by two. Under Cabrera’s order, Lee was nevertheless cleared for hire by a BPPD background investigator without a thorough investigation.
Lee has since been terminated for improperly removing personal belongings, narcotics and firearms from BPPD’s evidence room. Truitt said there is a pending criminal investigation regarding Lee’s conduct.
(LinkedIn/@Village of Biscayne Park)
Deputy chief Mark Steele, seen here during his last promotion, has been appointed acting Biscayne Park Police chief.
Cabrera also appointed Jose Castro to a volunteer background investigator position that he created, in addition to sponsoring Castro to the police academy without the required background checks. Had those checks been performed, they would have revealed a lengthy criminal history, including assault and battery, domestic assault, a weapons violation and instances of impersonating a police officer, thus disqualifying Castro from the academy.
Truitt’s update further reveals that Jose Castro’s son, Chris Castro, also was hired by Cabrera despite being terminated from another law enforcement agency and having six internal affairs investigations on his record. Chris Castro has since been terminated from BPPD for failure to complete probation due to multiple issues, including mishandling of evidence and several citizens’ complaints.
Truitt stated in his public post that he discovered multiple other issues, “including incomplete personnel files, incomplete training documentation, the complete absence of an inventory management system, a failed evidence management system and multiple accusations of cronyism.”
Presumably, any other problems in the hiring of remaining personnel yet to be uncovered could leave the force temporarily understaffed, as BPPD only employs about 12 full-time officers at a time.
The motives behind Cabrera’s wrongful hires and his relationship to those who benefited from them remains unclear.
Past Corruption
(Biscayne Times File Photo)
Raimundo Atesiano. Former Biscayne Park Police Chief
Prior to becoming BPPD’s chief, Cabrera served for 28 years in the city of Miami’s police department, where he rose to deputy chief. In 2017, he took a brief shot at becoming chief of police in Phoenix before ultimately accepting the Biscayne Park job in 2018.
The police department that Cabrera adopted six years ago was already a troubled one. The police chief that directly preceded him, Raimundo Atesiano, had just been found to be the ringleader behind multiple false arrests specifically aimed at targeting innocent Black people.
Atesiano was sentenced to three years in prison for conspiracy to deprive persons of civil rights that very year. However, in 2020, public defenders and prosecutors in Miami-Dade County were still working to clear false charges from the victims’ court records, the oldest of which dated back to 2010.
In 2010, before Truitt’s time as manager, Atesiano was hired by the village despite having been fired by Sunny Isles Beach for falsifying a police report.
During his two-year tenure as chief, Atesiano directed officers to target Black men in order to make the department’s crime statistics look good. Pinning innocent residents – oftentimes from the nearby communities of North Miami and unincorporated Miami-Dade – Atesiano boasted artificially high arrest rates for home burglaries and car thefts.
The damage included roughly 800 probable false misdemeanor charges and at least 60 felony cases. Some of the victims were convicted. Others had their licenses suspended or had to pay hefty fines. One got deported to Haiti after serving four years in prison.
When he assumed the position of chief, Cabrera told this publication that the false arrests had made him “sick to his stomach” and then quickly lowered arrest rates in the village – yet corruption persisted in another form.
Notwithstanding the police department’s history and the current scandal, Truitt said they do “not in any way reflect on the good men and women of the police department who protect Biscayne Park on a daily basis.”