Hialeah mayor gets it wrong. Herald’s not racist, it doesn’t like coddling cops accused of sexual assault | Editorial
Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernandez is appalled that the Miami Herald had the audacity to investigate a Hialeah police sergeant accused of using the power of his badge to sexually harass and assault three women and a 14-year-old girl. Prompted by the coverage, the FBI arrested Jesus Menocal Jr., who has pleaded not guilty.
Frankly, we are appalled that Hernandez thinks the Herald investigation is the real problem, rather than the possibility that a sexual predator is on the city’s police force. At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, Hernandez called the Herald “racist” and “anti-Cuban.”
In fact, in his ranting defense of Hialeah’s police chief, Sergio Velázquez, the mayor showed far more vitriol against the Herald than he did against Menocal’s alleged crimes. The alleged victims seemed to rank pretty low on his compassion scale.
Reporters and editors across the land are used to having harsh words hurled at them from politicians, public servants, schemers and scammers unhappy that the media have thrown a spotlight on alleged misdeeds. It comes with the territory.
But the Hialeah mayor’s angry, bullying accusations are too ugly to let stand. They are a sign of his gross disrespect not only to journalists in the Herald newsroom, but also to the residents of Hialeah. Whom is he in office to serve and protect?
Menocal had been under suspicion since 2015 as the three women and the teenager, in four separate cases, complained to Hialeah police that he pulled them over, sexually violated them or pressured them for sex.
As the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s office investigated, Chief Velázquez moved Menocal back to the SWAT team and gave him a pay raise. The Herald rightly questioned that judgment. But Hernandez takes exception and sees other motives. State prosecutors decided there wasn’t enough evidence to charge Menocal and he stayed with SWAT. The Herald kept digging.
The FBI rightly stepped in and arrested Menocal in December.
At this week’s City Council meeting, the mayor did not discuss how the city might move forward or assure residents that the city and police chief are committed to officers of the highest integrity. No, he lashed out at the Herald in a 10-minute tirade.
“The Herald’s never been a friend of Hialeah, they’ll never be a friend of Hialeah. They don’t care about our city, they don’t care about our people,” Hernández said. “It’s a racist newspaper. Anti-Hialeah, anti-Cuban.”
He closed with a challenge. Or was it a threat? “I’ll challenge your editor anytime she wants to go [on] a Spanish [radio] station with me. I’ll put her in her place.”
Hernandez was referring to Aminda Marqués González, president, publisher and executive editor of the Herald. She’s the top decision maker at the paper. She’s Cuban American. And she grew up in Hialeah.
“The issue at hand is the behavior of a police officer who, under serious allegations of sexual misconduct, still managed to thrive in the Hialeah Police Department,” Marqués González said.
To imply that the Menocal scandal was sparked by the Herald’s purported hatred of Cubans or of Hialeah is preposterous.
Does Hernandez also believe that the Herald’s groundbreaking coverage of Jeffrey Epstein, a billionaire sexual predator with friends and enablers in high places, was motivated by anti-Semitism?
It’s hard to believe that the mayor of Miami-Dade’s second-largest city would even admit to such a regressive view. Like the Herald’s prodigious, and ongoing, coverage on Epstein, its Menocal investigation was rooted in our mission to uncover wrongdoing; to hold those working in the public interest accountable.
Hialeah residents have every right to ask: In whose interest is Mayor Hernandez working?
We’re not sure.
