Fired Opa-locka police chief files $4 million lawsuit for “pain and suffering”

James Dobson, the fired Opa-locka police chief, filed a civil lawsuit Tuesday alleging that he was let go in retaliation for reporting corruption and because he defended the actions of a police officer who ticketed a relative of the mayor during a traffic stop almost three weeks ago.

In the two-count complaint filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court, Dobson argues he “saw his law enforcement career and reputation destroyed after he refused to cave in to a city rife with corruption.” He’s asking for $4 million for “pain and suffering”, “mental anguish” and the loss of future earnings.

“The losses are either permanent or continuing in nature and the plaintiff will suffer said losses in the future,” attorney Michael Pizzi wrote in Dobson’s lawsuit.

After his firing, Dobson claimed he was let go a day after defending one of his officer’s who had pulled over the mayor’s cousin during a routine traffic stop and ticketed her for not wearing a seatbelt and not having proof of insurance or registration. Mayor Matthew Pigatt called Dobson’s accusations “meritless.” And City Manager John Pate said there was no indication the ticketing “was not handled properly.”

Dobson was fired on Aug. 14, three months after an outside review determined that the city’s police department couldn’t even respond to service calls in a “professional manner” and that most of its 54 sworn officers called the morale within the department “terrible.” The review also found that department policies hadn’t been updated in six years and that evidence stored in individual lockers lacked basic security measures.

Pate, the city manager, said Dobson was let go mainly because the department failed to follow recommendations in the three months since the May report.

Dobson joined Opa-locka in 2014 after stints with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Florida Highway Patrol and Doral Police.

Opa-locka has been mired in financial turmoil for decades. For the past four years its purse strings have been controlled by a state-appointed oversight board. The city of 16,000 mostly African American residents in Central Miami-Dade County has been so financially strapped the past decade that many of its streets are almost impassable and littered with potholes and the city has even had trouble keeping sewage from flooding its streets.