State attorney sending resources to Miami Gardens to fight crime spike, help solve cases

The city of Miami Gardens, which suffered a spike in major crime near the end of last year, has signed an agreement with the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office intended to help solve crimes and lower the city’s crime rate.

Five staffers from the state attorney’s office will essentially be embedded with Miami Gardens police in a move that will enable the third-largest and northernmost city in the county to gather evidence more quickly, State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said during a press conference at her office Friday.

Surrounded by Miami Gardens Mayor Oliver Gilbert, several city commissioners and Police Chief Delma Noel-Pratt, Fernandez Rundle called the additional resources just “another tool” to help Miami Gardens police.

“We’ve committed additional resources to expand our gun violence initiative,” said the state attorney. “It’s always good to have a prosecutor or lawyer on the scene.”

The agreement, similar to one already in place with Miami and Miami-Dade police, requires the state attorney to provide the city two attorneys, one to focus on homicides, the other on contact shootings. A victim’s advocate will help coordinate with an injured victim, witnesses and family members. The state attorney will also provide a paralegal and a secretary. Miami Gardens has agreed to cover part of the cost, paying the state attorney about $150,000 a year.

Miami Gardens police have had their hands full in recent months.

A deadly spree of shootings in the city in late October and early November left four people dead and six others injured. Police believe the shootings were gang-related and targeted attacks, several of them retaliatory.

Murders and robberies in Miami Gardens were up in 2019, according to internal department crime statistics provided by a law-enforcement source. There were 27 homicides in 2019, up three from the year before. As for robberies, the city recorded 236 last year, up from 221 in 2018. The number of aggravated assaults, which include non-fatal shootings actually dipped. There were 445 aggravated assaults in 2019, down from 532 the previous year.

The agreement between the state attorney and the city also comes on the heels of a Miami Herald report earlier this week that claimed troubled NFL running back Mark Walton punched his girlfriend repeatedly, then dragged her back into his Jaguar in Miami Gardens, an alleged crime that has sat on the back burner since March.

That’s when Jasmine Thompson, Walton’s girlfriend, notified police about the incident. Walton was let go by the Miami Dolphins in November after being accused of beating up the same woman during a separate altercation. The running back, who played at the University of Miami and was drafted by the Cincinnati Bengals, is also the godson of a Miami Gardens police officer.

Gilbert, the city’s mayor, said the collaboration with the state attorney is about more than just making arrests.

“It’s so that we can build cases quicker. We’ll do a better job of getting witnesses and building cases,” he said.

Noel-Pratt, the police chief, said with an attorney embedded during the investigation of a shooting, it will enable Miami Gardens to get search warrants and talk to key witnesses more quickly.

“The information will be fresh for everyone on the scene,” she said.

The announcement also comes in a year when Gilbert and Fernandez Rundle are running for election.

The mayor, who is term-limited after serving two terms, announced in January he will run for Miami-Dade Commissioner Barbara Jordan’s vacated seat in August. His main rival is expected to be Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed teen who was shot and killed at his father’s apartment complex by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman.

And Fernandez Rundle, who has led the State Attorney’s Office since 1993, is expected to face off against Melba Pearson, a former state prosecutor under Fernandez Rundle and the former deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida. Though Pearson hasn’t officially announced a run, a political committee named Real Reform for Miami-Dade said two weeks ago it was raising money in support of someone to run against the state attorney in August.

Reached two weeks ago and asked if she intended to take on the four-time elected state attorney, Pearson wouldn’t commit, but criticized Fernandez Rundle for the handling of a case involving former Hialeah police officer Jose Menocal Jr., who is accused of several instances of sexual misconduct while on duty. The FBI, which was referred to the case by state prosecutors, arrested Menocal three weeks ago on allegations of civil rights violations.