The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - #BecauseMiami: The City of Progress

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

Billy Corben is focusing on the city of Hialeah this week. First, Billy is joined by former Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez to give his perspective on the city he used to lead. Then he's joined by former Miami police chief Jorge Colina who explains how the Hialeah Police Department was powered by Santeria. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A police officer is held to a very high standard and I'm here to enforce that standard. But about five years after that interview, prosecutors now claim the former top cop was a fraud and thief. Prosecutors revealed over three million dollars are missing or unaccounted for within the department, all while Velasquez was chief. Over 900 cash deposits totaling over two million dollars were discreetly made into his accounts. The thousand spent on Louis Vuitton, Versace and Cartier were questionable. A lot of the money allegedly stolen from a safe in his own office was seized during drug busts,

like in a 2021 cocaine operation where Hialeah police seized nearly $300,000. Of that total, more than $90,000 are now missing. Structuring transactions to evade reporting or registration requirements. That's a first degree felony. Organized fraud, a first degree felony, and grand theft, a first degree felony. We'll enter a plea of not guilty to all three counts. Hialeah, the city of progress. If Miami is like a world within a world or a country within a country, Hialeah is like a country within a country within a country. It's like some inception shit.

It is the second largest city in Miami-Dade County by population. What is it like the fourth largest or sixth largest in the state of Florida and it is a really unique place where you have about now predominantly working class Hispanic community. I think about 90 percent of families use Spanish at home. It is a place where people are have fled communism and tyranny and dictatorships and socialism from around the world. Mostly Cuba, I think over 85 to between 85 and 90 percent of the population is Cuban-American, yet it is also the number one city in America

for Obamacare signups and recipients. And it is a really intriguing place where it is famous for a lot of things, the Hialeah racetrack, but also a Supreme Court case back in the early 90s of the Church of the Lukumi Babalao-Ai versus the city of Hialeah, where this Santeria church that was sacrificing animals, this is an Afro-Cuban religion where animal sacrifice is part of the ritual of the religion, and the city of Hialeah said, stop doing that. And the church said, no, we have the first amendment freedom of religion, went to the Supreme Court

and in a nine zero decision, the Supremes affirmed the church's right to sacrifice animals as part of its religion. It's a really wild place, Hialeah, and has been kind of notorious in terms of corruption, of issues with respect to law and order, of mayors running into troubles. One of my favorite stories involves Carlos Hernandez. Carlos Hernandez is a former cop turned mayor

who, Miami Herald reported, like the mayor Julio Romena, was a loan shark in Hialeah's shadow banking system, who had made some high interest, usurious allegedly loans to a convicted Ponzi schemer. This is a real place, by the way. One of the mayors, Julio Romana, was indicted for it for tax fraud. He was eventually acquitted by the way. But this other mayor, Carlos Hernandez, denied that he was a loan shark. And then when he was forced to testify under oath, admitted that he was a loan shark. But because he shit on the Miami Herald and at a press conference said,

the Miami Herald is a lying communist rag, I am not a loan shark, and then admitted under oath later I am not a loan shark, and then admitted under oath later that he was a loan shark, he got an ethics fine for lying, but he was fined, Roy, for lying twice, once in English and once in Spanish. Oh no. And then he tried to pay his fine

by showing up with a U-Haul full of orange Home Depot buckets with $4,000 in pennies. And they turned down the payment and eventually sued him for it. I mean, this is an incredibly fascinating place. And of course, as you saw in the cold open there, Roy, it is where the former police chief was just arrested for stealing possibly millions of dollars in cash, only hundreds

of thousands of which are accounted for at the moment. I don't know where the hell the rest of it is. Maybe Carlos Hernandez, the mayor, strong mayor who hired him, former cop himself, might know the answer. I hope he got those pennies back, by the way. Hialeah in the pandemic real estate boom in Miami was described by realtors as the Brooklyn of Miami. I would describe it more if we're going to use a New York analogy as the Staten Island of Miami. Former Mayor Raul Martinez is joining us now. He was the mayor for nearly 20 years, a little bit of

a hiccup in the middle for his own legal troubles, but for over 20 years he was the mayor, the first Cuban American mayor of a major American city. And in 2004, Mr. Mayor, towards the end of your tenure, you had an opportunity to fire Sergio Velasquez. I think he was recommended for termination, and you didn't. You've called that, to the Miami Herald, one of your biggest regrets in politics, of which you were there a long time. Tell me what happened in 2004 with Sergio Velasquez

and what was the recommendation and what was your decision and why? And do you regret it? Yeah, but first of all, I gotta clear some of the stuff that you said. And yes, I did have a hiccup. And my hiccup was a Republican attorney in Miami that wanted his wife to become a Congresswoman, Ileana Ross, they

selected it. That was my hiccup. And I fought it to the end and I went to trial three times and at the end I came back, I was elected, re-elected, and I kept on going. So to be clear, you were running for your plan to run for Congress. Ileana Ross Leighton wanted to run for Congress. Her husband was a U.S. attorney in South Florida. Enter him. Enter him. He was never confirmed by the Senate because Bush's father decided, listen, all the shit

that I knew and all the shit about the woman and the fight in the slapping of Ileana and all that was going to come out. So you were convicted of extortion and racketeering and you were re-elected after you were convicted, I should mention re-elected Mayor of Ileana and that eventually that verdict was overturned on appeal and what you're saying is that was to get you out of the way to clear a path for Ileana Ross-Layton. And it did, in fact, right. Sure, absolutely. I had to fight for my name. I had to fight for my family.

I had to fight to make sure that people understood that I didn't do anything that they said that I did. And so I decided not to run, that I'd rather fight the charges. Mistake that I made, had I run and won that district, which was very democratic, it was Club Pepper, then the case would have gone away, but I didn't. At the time, I decided to fight the charges,

and I did for seven years, eight years. And were eventually exonerated and stayed the mayor of Hialeah for what? More than a decade. Yeah, so let me ask you, before I circle back to my first question, I do want to ask you, how do you explain?

Because a lot of people listening have no idea what Hialeah is. They might've just heard the word for the first time today. How do you explain to people outside of Hialeah or outside of Florida, what Hialeah is? Well, Hialeah is a working town.

Hialeah is the center of industry when it started many, many years ago based on certain advantages that people were given to bring businesses. It was a garment center of the United States, if I may say that. A lot of the people from New York would bring the stuff here. A lot of the companies started in Hialeah and it developed with hard working individuals. But it was one of those cities that wanted to be away from Miami. It has a hell of a history. You know, Hialeah lost the charter because of things that were being done by the chief of police at the time, Red Slater and his name name was and the guy that brought it or the person that brought the city down at the time Was Senator Graham's father Ernest Graham. He became a senator passed the bill

Doing away with Hialeah They did away with the city and then they reconvened and brought it back with a new mayor new Chief of police and and that was the story that I told Bob Graham, the son, because he didn't even know about. But Hialeah was more than just a racetrack. The racetrack was the key point of wealthy people coming to the area. But this has always been a hardworking people's town.

I'm a fan of the Richard Dreyfus movie from 1989, Let It Ride, which is where the high, you know, it shot at the Hialeah racetracks. Of course, it's more than the racetrack, but I think a lot of people outside may be familiar with it because of that. My question now is back to 2004. You are the mayor towards the end of your long tenure.

And what happens with Sergio Velasquez? There's a recommendation, there's a decision, there's some remorse, what happened? Well, it happened before. Sergio Velasquez comes in, he becomes sergeant. I probably met him at the time when he was made sergeant. Then he gets on the lieutenant's list. The chief recommended that I, you know, consider him and he had a clean record. So I appointed him lieutenant on a provational basis.

He did some of the stuff that has been coming out now. And when I went to suspend him, he came back with an offer that lowered the rank, took a suspension. So it's very hard to fire a police officer. It's not the easiest. I've done it. I did it, but it wasn't easy. So then the time comes, his name comes up again for the list of lieutenant, the chief of police at the time, Bolaños came back and said, look, you know, you have the eternity for three individuals. This person, you know, paid his dues. He made a mistake. He's not going to do it again.

So once again, I was the type of individual to give others a another chance, and I gave him a second chance. It wasn't long before I had to demote him and he took, I think it was a year suspension, which all the attorneys and everybody would say, listen, this is better than fighting in court, losing it and then having to keep it as a lieutenant. So I chose regrettably, chose the route of bring him down back to sergeant. It took a year suspension, which is a lot of money. And that was it. Then the story goes after I retired, Julia Rowena tried to bring him back as a lieutenant and the PBA or the somebody took him to court.

I was out of office and I was right. They could not bring him back as a lieutenant. So he ended up as a Sergeant. And I was right, they could not bring him back as a lieutenant. So he ended up as a sergeant. Now Golanus is going to retire and Julio Robaina, I'm telling you this because I've said it on my show in Spanish and I'll tell him to his face, Julio Robaina came to my house as mayor and said, look, I have to name a chief. And I said, well, you know, what do you have at the time? There was a deputy chief, Mark Overton, very good, very decent individual.

He wasn't too happy with it, Julio, but he made that decision. But what they did is they brought this thief and I've always called him a sergeant, never called him a chief and don't call him a chief, call him a thief. Brought him as a deputy chief, knowing that Mark Overton was going to reach his retirement age, and then they brought him as chief. And that was Carlos Hernandez doing. Now, how did he get there? I was told by an owner of a pawn shop

that he recommended to Julio to make him a deputy chief. I'm sorry, a pawn shop? Pawn shop owner, yes. That was being investigated by this city at the time when I left. And you know what? That informant that we had in there disappeared

because apparently the new mayor had to be told all the things that were going and the guy left because I guess the pawn shop owner was told that he was under the eyes of the department. So I've heard some cheese may that there may be a pawn shop or pawn shops in Hialeah who were sold guns, possibly hundreds of guns out of the evidence locker at Hialeah Police Department. That happened once and the officer involved, and I think his wife, went arrest.

This happened after I left. You know, I'm not keeping up with a lot of the shit that's going on in Hialeah. So you regret then? happened after I left. I'm not keeping up with a lot of the shit that's going on in IELTS. So you regret then? Absolutely, I regret it. I said it back then. He should have never, as a matter of fact,

I think I saw him a couple of times. And he was all dressed up with the regalia and the stars and all that. And I kept calling him Sergeant. I never called him Chief. I call it today to me, his last rank, civil service rank was that of a sergeant. And you don't bring a sergeant to be in chief. And then I never knew that the chief had safe in his offices.

We had a property room, and in that property room, you had to have a big safe where the drugs and the gold and the money was supposed to be kept. Now, how did all that change? You gotta ask Carlos Hernandez, his buddy, you gotta ask him. Right, that's where Dan has a safe here, where all the drugs and the gold and the cash are too, right? The metal arc safe here at the studio.

That's a really good question. Carlos Hernandez, I mean, are his hands clean in all of this, the former mayor? Listen, Billy, and I'm not gonna cast any expression and you know, negative on Carlos, even though I don't like the guy, he knows I don't like him. I think he's the worst person in the world. Stupid as they've made him.

They call him a rock. Not because of being strong because there was not even the water we're getting to his head. But you don't want to cast dispersions. No, no, I don't want to do that. I, you know, why do that? But I just, because you know what? Not all police officers in highly are bad. And we got to also go back to the time where Erika Carrillo did a story on Channel 23 that somebody had found a wallet with $600 in it.

All right. The guy went to the police department and turned it in. And you know that whenever you turn in some property and if they're supposed to put an ad and they're supposed to find the owners, but after six months, if they haven't found the owner and given that money back, the person that brought it in is entitled to that property. So the guy went six months later and they said, well, we don't have any records. So he went to Erica Carrillo, Erica Carrillo went through FTLE and they did the investigation and it just happened that the The police advisor at the time can't remember her name never met her. He lost something

She had come from FTLE they had No record of the wallet No record of the $600 and she reminded me that in order to appease everybody, they gave that gentleman a check from the city for $600. That means that they were stealing money way back in 2014, 2015. Mr. Mayor, I wanna run this video real quick.

Police running in to control an out of control crowd as the situation on the Palmetto deteriorates. Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez jumping into the fray with the protesters and the cops. A police officer was attacked by someone and when I approached trying to calm the situation down, one individual took a swing and hit me in the face and so, you know, the whole damn thing started. A bad situation taking a turn for the worse. Some of the protesters blocking the Palmetto turning violent, scuffling with police, who were just trying to keep the peace before things turned even uglier.

where things turned even uglier. Hey, turn him around. Get out of the way. Get in the unit. Some people were injured, including Hialeah Police Chief Rolando Bolaños, who was taken to the hospital for a gash on the head. Six stitches, two aspirins, and a bill. There you go.

Who's going to pay for that now? I guess the people of Hialeah have to pay for that. They pay for the costs, and I pay for the pain. In June of 1999, Mr. Mayor, the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted a very small boat, some have described it as a rowboat of six Cubans who were trying to make it to the freedom of the United States about 150 yards off the coast of Surfside. They were sprayed with water cannons to try to keep them from getting a dry foot. They were pepper sprayed in some cases and it led to an uprising as a result of these six Cuban immigrants trying to get into the United States and being taken into custody.

And they shut down the causeway by the Coast Guard station here in Miami Beach. They shut down the Palmetto Expressway, huge demonstrations. And I wanna know what you make of it now as there are demonstrations across the country, particularly in Los Angeles, fighting for, you know, again, you had major duty politicians, both Republican and Democrat in Miami-Dade back in 1999, saying we need an investigation of the Coast Guard, of the federal government for the abuse of these immigrants.

What do you make of sort of the Miami of today is the America of tomorrow? Why aren't people in Miami pissed now? What is happening to Cubans? What is happening to Venezuelans? What is happening to Dominicans, Nicaraguans, Haitians? Because they're afraid. They're afraid to show and say,

they made a mistake by voting for Donald Trump. They're afraid and they're crying, oh, my son is being deported. Some other jerk who was a journalist in Cuba, oh I was arrested in Cuba now, they're going to deport me back to Cuba. They're afraid Billy. I mean you need to listen to my program. What I'm telling you in English I tell the people every day. And you know how they can change the tune now? Is go from being a Republican and change to being a Democrat.

And when they see the numbers of the Republicans going down and the Democrats going up, they're all going to pay attention. Carlos Jimenez with his shaking of the head. And whenever you see Carlos Jimenez do that, he's lying to you. I already know. Is that his tell? Is that you play poker with Carlos Jimenez? Yeah, yeah, and when he starts moving like this, I call him Carlos Hicotea.

What does that mean in English? Hicotea is turtle. You seen the turtle neck. Mr. Mayor, last question. Sports. Hank Goldberg, what happened with Hank at the Hialeah race track? Oh, that's another story, man. All right, should we do that next time? We'll do that next time. No, that's another story, man. All right. Should we do that next time? We'll do that next time. No, I want to go to you quickly. Hank Gordon was a fat slob who had a gambling problem. We were all at Hylia Racetrack.

He was in the one side and I was in the director's room and the electricity went off so that race couldn't go off. He comes bursting into the director's room and the electricity went off so that race couldn't go off. He comes bursting into the director's room after having free lunches from the race track and they're having all the kinds of benefits that the press people used to get at a high-end race track. He starts screaming. And I said, Hank, the electricity went off.

And then he said something to me. And, you know, I'm short tempered. I followed him through the kitchen and he ran like a chicken that he was. And I'm sorry, I didn't think he's dead. And he said, Oh, the mayor. And then he brought the press with him, thinking that they were going to make me back off. And I said, you know what, if I had the choice and I had the chance, I would have hit him because he would take food, he would take drinks from the racetrack. He was always looking for tips, you know, because he was a sicko, he was a sicko.

And again, the media at the time portrayed me as the bad guy. It's all right. Look, I left the city, I left it with $33 million in the bank, no debts. Roads were being built, buildings for the elderly were being built, all of that. When I left, the Republican mayors came in,

Julio Robaina, and you talked about the Ponzi scheme. Well, you know, it was a Ponzi scheme. And I was glad that I was at the trial, Julio Robaina, when Carlos Hernandez had to testify, and when they asked him, how much money were you getting in interest? 3%. And they said, 3%, is that a month or a year?

No, a month. That's 36%. They were all doing it, but you know what? Hialeah has become, to the state attorney and others, Chinatown. They don't care what happens. And also, the 4,000 pennies or whatever it was that he brought it in, Harvey Rubin, my dear friend, he didn't want to have any more issues because he was the guy that had to collect the money.

And he took it and took it to the bank and the bank did him a favor and they cashed it into $4,000. That's a true story. It was $400,000 pennies because it was $4,000 in pennies. Yeah. But Harvey Rubin and this I was told that Harvey did it because he didn't want to have more shows and he didn't want to because what they were going to do is say, you know, send it back to Carlos and throw it in the floor city hall that's what I would have done but you know they didn't do it because again you know we want to be nice well now they were nice to this guy and look three million dollars are missing now you're going to tell me that the auditors didn't pick it up you You're gonna tell me that the secretary didn't know that the sergeant in SIS special investigation didn't know

that the chief was acting alone, that the mayor didn't know, that the accountants did not, that finance didn't know, that they were taking checks for 40,000 and cashing it and depositing another account. Come on, man. One question that I have,

and since they're not returning my phone call, my question is, why don't they charge him with RICO and go back 10 years? Why only five years? Why not go back to RICO? Because he was using the city police department as a criminal enterprise. On that note, Raul Martinez, former mayor of Hialeah. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Take care. You're coming here super defensive, Chief. I'm not defensive. What I don't appreciate is that you're going around in circles here when you can just ask a specific question and I'll give you a specific answer. Listen, you're not going to bully me like you do the other people. I'm not intimidated here and this is absolutely ridiculous that we have spent this much time on this already. What's ridiculous is, Chief, is your attitude coming here. It's obvious that the people employ you. All right, gentlemen, let's bring it back to order with you please. So that clip has nothing to do with what we're talking about with former Miami Police Chief George Colina but it just seems like the best way to introduce him

don't you think so right? Yeah a fight with Joe Corario is always the best way I mean we all know that he's Now, a fight with Joe Corolla is always the best way to do it. I mean, we all know that he's... He's a wife, be her wife, be her... Yeah, that's Joe Corolla... So, George Colina was the police chief in the city of Miami from 2018 to 2021 before his retirement. Prior to that, he was with the department since the year 1990.

He's now the president and founder of J.C.G. George Colina Group. You can find them at George Colina Group dot com. And what he's really here to talk about is hair care, because always on fleek. What is the regimen? It's the Jimmy Johnson regimen. I always said when I die, I want to come back as Jimmy Johnson's hair. I might want to come back as George Colina's hair. Fourteen percent of my pension goes to hair products, so I gotta figure out a way of managing that while I get old.

14%! And that 401K is coming in handy. What do you think, Roy? Bunch of key limes, maybe some conch juice. Yeah, and just the secret to any good key lime pie just a tiny droplet of Key deer blood of endangered key deer blood just to get that shine in there. She for 14% I love the specificity of the 14% because that's what you do now your Consultancy does I guess assessments of police departments and things like that and you recently did the subject of our show today an

assessment of the Hialeah Police Department. You did that now a few years ago, back in 2022, in the wake of the tenure of now indicted and arrested police chief Sergio Velasquez. And I want to talk a little bit about what you found there in that department of Hialeah, because it starts right off the bat talking about the culture at the department. And I'm really curious what your assessment found in terms of, I guess, culture and morale

following Sergio Velasquez's, I guess, was he terminated by the new mayor Bovo at the time? What was the status? You can say he was terminated, certainly, because the mayor, he's a strong mayor, he didn't want him anymore. Back then, if you would have asked, the last quiz he probably would have told you that this was a decision that was made mutually, right?

But the reality is that he was asked to go. And what did you find there about the culture he left behind at the Hialeah Police Department? It was pretty sad, Billy. I've never quite experienced something like this. Because first of all, just so everybody understands, the way that we do these assessments is in the aggregate. So we never out anybody.

We let people know that we're going to speak in general terms. And of course, we encourage people to tell the truth, because it gives them a voice that they might not otherwise have, where they can speak freely. And, you know, in going through that process, there was literally people that came in and we asked questions to who sobbed while they told us about their experiences. So it was it was sad because the vast majority of the people we interviewed appeared to be very dedicated to the city, right?

Loved working in Hialeah. Most of them lived in Hialeah, but were, you know, felt like they didn't have a voice and felt afraid, right? They could lose their job at any minute. You're walking on eggshells. That was kind of like the feeling. Now, we're walking on eggshells here

because we don't know what might cause our dismissal. Culture of fear is the way you describe it. Culture of fear. Implemented by the previous administration, meaning Chief Sergio Velasquez. What you've seen a lot of police departments you ran, I think the largest municipal police department in Dade County, probably one of the largest municipal departments in the state of Florida at City of Miami. But was this unique? I often refer to Hialeah politely, diplomatically as being a unique place. Did you

find, was there anything that stood out that was unusual about in your decades of law enforcement experience in the city of Hialeah? Pretty unique. I won't lie. I've never quite had an experience like this. I've been to a lot of police departments. I did work with the Department of Justice visiting departments even outside the state of Florida. This was pretty out there.

A lot of people were afraid of even having a, I don't know what the right term would be, you know, a spell cast on them. You know, apparently the chief was big into Sant'Elia and even people who don't believe in that, of course, think, hey, but just to be on the safe side, you know, I don't want to be on the other side of some spell or... So you know, that alone, right? Of the fact that he was so involved in that, apparently, and made it obvious to people.

People were afraid of that kind of stuff. I'm sorry, just for, you know, most people who listen to this show don't live in South Florida. So for clarity, what you just said is that you spoke with people within the police department. I imagine officers as well as civilians in the department, not a small organization either for a

municipal department. You just said some of them expressed fear. They were scared that a spell might be cast on them. That's what you just said. Yes, that's what I said. And listen, and I'm laughing now and I don't mean to only because you know, like I said. And listen, and I'm laughing now and I don't mean to, only because, you know, like I said, a lot of these people were very scared, very worried. And so I don't mean to make a joke out of it, but you asked the question, right? And it was like one of the bizarrest things I've ever heard in my life.

Did you light an Orisha candle before you joined the show today, just in case? Just in case? You don't mean to laugh because you don't want to spellcast on you. You don't want to have anybody visit the hill at Tropical Park with some chickens, living or dead. The hill at Tropical Park, by the way, is a very popular spot. If you ever go for a hike up there, you'll find a lot of chicken bones.

And I don't think people just ate it like Pollo Tropical or KFC and trashed them there. So, Chief, we have heard that the Chisme, the rumors from Las Malas Lenguas who say that the chief was very involved in either Santeria as a priest himself or had one that he consulted with. I mean, you must've heard a lot of things.

Yeah, some of the rumors were that he had someone, a high priest or priestess, or, you know, I don't know how the rank hierarchy there works, but apparently he had somebody above him that he would, you know, get counsel from on decisions that he would make internally at the police department. And, you know, of course, that was another concern because people felt like we don't know How we're going to be led because he receives instructions from you know, the Grand Wizard or or You know, whatever you call them. I don't remember there's a term. Is there a pope? What is upset of Santeria is there is yeah, I don't I don't know the hierarchy but there is there's a rank system and Somebody right there's somebody who would be in charge of him

as a Sandero, you know, those people exist, right? And so apparently that was the case here. So, Sandra, we mentioned it in the last segment is an Afro-Cuban religion that involves animal sacrifice, that involves, I mean, like any religion, there's a lot of superstition, there's a lot of stories, but there is specifically spells that they cast, candles that are lit, specific gods, Chang'e, the god of fire, whoever you worship to, and then you could put like curses on other people.

So you'll find little, at the courthouse in downtown Miami here during trials, very famously in the 80s and the 90s, judges and clerks and lawyers would show up in the morning and on the courthouse steps find these little shrines with bones from animals and candles and things. Spells. Yeah, spells either for the luck of the defendants or to curse the prosecutors and judges. This is a very common thing in South Florida. I'd never quite heard of a police department that was run necessarily by a consultancy of Santeros.

They don't work for free, these folks either. No, apparently, yeah, apparently it's very expensive, right? So apparently this isn't like out of the kindness of someone's heart, right? Where you can maybe walk into a church or something somewhere and say, hey, you know, I'm in a bad place. You know, I'd like to speak to somebody

and maybe they pull you aside and they give you a little bit of their time. No, that's not the case here. Here, you know, it's big bucks. So some of the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars that the chief had allegedly stolen or stashed away in his floor safe, was there a Santero on the payroll

of the Hialeah Police Department? Did you find anything like that in your assessment? You know, we didn't hook into it, honestly, and I didn't, you know, we weren't there to investigate this, right? These are just some of the things that people said when they came in, right? That they were afraid of being fired, they didn't agree with the chief. That was a lot of it as well, right? Hey, if you come across like you're not on board with him or disagree with him, you're in trouble. If he thought you crossed him, you could be in trouble, you know, being disciplined or demoted or fired, or you could be, you know, have a spell

cast on you. So the majority of the people were afraid of him taking disciplinary action, but there was definitely people that were afraid of him using the dark arts. Chief, as with any organization of this size, you're going to find that most people are probably just there to do the right thing. They want to come in in the morning, they want to do their jobs, they want to serve people, they want to be safe, they want to go home to their families, they want to eventually retire with their pensions. They're not there for f**kery, they're not there for chicanery or for corruption. So like, how do you like, what are your recommendations to the city? You're like, there's a lot of good people here that just want to, you know, be police officers or be civilian employees. I imagine

that's what you found here. I read it in your assessment. And what do you do for them? So the vast majority of the people, really, without a doubt, they came across very dedicated. They seemed like they were hurting for the police department as a whole, right? Not just for themselves, but for the amount of people where morale had hit rock bottom.

What was really interesting too is sometimes you go to these departments and then you talk about community policing or building a relationship with the community that you serve. You're going to hear a lot of people that are like, oh, bullshit, I don't want to hear that crap. I just want to go out and do police work. Here, that wasn't the case. Here, they were like, I want to be able to go up to una ventanita and have Cuban coffee and chit chat with the people in the area that I patrol. Right? So they were like the other way around. They were like, we want to be in the community. We want to show them we care about them. The community is super supportive of us and we know that. We want to show that we appreciate them because in Hialeah they are very pro law

enforcement and they felt like I can't even show them that I appreciate that support because if I stop and get a shot of Cuban coffee and somebody hands me up or the chief sees me I'm in trouble. Crazy. You want your local police to have that kind of relationship with the people that they police chief before, before I let you go, last question. I'd be remiss. You know, we showed at the top of the SEG, one of my favorite flashback Fridays of you and Joe Corollo going at it in 2019 at a Miami City Commission meeting.

You were in the city of Miami for a long time. You referred to your assessment of the Hialeah Police Department as a culture of fear. I feel that that's what fuels the city of Miami, not just the police department. I'm talking about the city of Miami. I refer to it as a city that is effectively a racketeering organization that runs on intimidation and harassment and bullying of city employees,

of rank and file police officers, of residents, of business owners, where people live in a constant state of fear of their own government, of losing their jobs, of losing their livelihoods, of losing their businesses or their families. What is your take on the current state of your city of Miami? I think it still exists, unfortunately. I think that there's a lot of people

that are afraid to speak up. There's a lot of people that are afraid to speak up. There's a lot of people that are afraid to, you know, say what they're thinking. Ideally, in any organization, police or in the private sector, you want people to give you contrasting points of view, right? You want to have discussions so you arrive at a better place, you make better decisions. It benefits the whole, right? That isn't some kind of altruistic, you know, I wish it were like this. No, that's the way it's supposed to be. And I know that people, because I still speak to a lot of people there, I know that people feel like they can't really speak up because you don't know

who might be offended by it, even though you're not doing anything wrong. It's literally your job to come up with ideas to try to find better ways to function, to question whatever it is, whatever mechanism you use now. You should be questioning how it works to see if there isn't a better way, right? But that's people are afraid and not necessarily afraid because they're going to have a spellcast on them like in like an ILEA, but they're afraid because maybe it means they don't get a promotion. Maybe it means they don't get to climb that ladder. Maybe it means that they're shunned, right? And nobody wants that. You want to go to work and do a good job and hope you're able to be promoted and have a better salary, et cetera. Well, there's a lot of people that are still absolutely

afraid to do what they should be doing and speaking up and challenging systems and protocols to get to a better place. Hashtag because Miami. Former Miami police chief George Kolina, GeorgeKolinaGroup.com, thanks so much for being here. Last month, Roy, there was a cockfighting ring that was busted in Southwest Miami-Dade

after cops were called because of a machete fight. Machete fight. And 42 people were arrested there. They had like 72 birds that they found on site for the cockfighting ring. And I realized with 42 people being arrested there on top of however many additional kind of spectators and folks that were there,

that's a bigger turnout than a Miami Marlins game. It seems like these days. We're just gonna bypass the fact that it was a shitty fight to make a Marlins attendance joke. Well, no, what I'm saying is that there's a rule of sorts in local theater where if the number of cast members in a show is greater than the number of audience members

who show up for a performance that night, they cancel the show. You're like they should have canceled the Marlins Rockies games. More baseball players and fans is what you're saying? What I'm saying is that the team already reported that they lost money staffing the park, is what I'm saying. We've been joking for years that the only already reported that they lost money staffing the park is what I'm saying. We've been joking for years that the only way to sell out

Marlins Park in Little Havana is to hold cock fights. And it turns out that's not entirely true because you can have Savannah bananas games, Miami Hurricanes games, Guns N' Roses concerts, monster truck rallies, literally anything except for a Marlins game at Marlins Park can sell out. It's just really, really pathetic. Yes.

It's sports. You know what else is pathetic? What's that Billy? I mean everything. What else? Yeah, that's right. That was a rhetorical question. It was kind of open-ended there.

Really everything except for the Florida Panthers. That's right. I would say. We don't know what's gonna happen because we are recording this on Wednesday. They played game four last night. I think we know what happened. I think congratulations.

This is what I... Most likely. You know, I'm gonna go into everything right now, by the way. Did I just jinx it? Yes, you did. All right. Knock on wood.

Dude, you're gonna get deported if you go up there. Probably, hopefully they let me stay. So the Florida Keys are under siege right now. ICE, the word on the street is are everywhere. Lot of low hanging fruit down there and one Trump voter is pretty upset. He has a small, he's a small business owner for 40 years in Key West. Vincent Scardina voted for Donald Trump and had one-third of his

entire workforce detained by ICE. Five of the six of them apparently are in the country legally and they've been torn away from their families and are already in detention centers in Texas and California. Some of them headed for, I presume, Nicaragua, which is where they're from, but possibly Guantanamo, possibly El Salvador. Nobody's quite sure, but this man in our Miami moment, he's having what he describes as a little bit of buyer's remorse, co-cats and cocaine's.

Vincent, you voted for Donald Trump. Yes, I did. Six Nicaraguan men on May 27th were detained along U. S. One in Sugarloaf Key on their way to a job. Vincent's Gardena is the owner of the roofing company where they worked. Given his support for the president, we asked what he would tell the commander in chief. What happened here? This situation is just totally just blatantly not at all what they said it was. While he agrees with most of the president's policies, he thought the Trump administration

was going to focus solely on deporting criminals. It seems immigration officials, he says, are just trying to meet quotas now. Buyers remorse, I don't know, a little bit. I know of one landscaper that lost nine or ten of his, the whole crew he had and he's just totally out of business all of a sudden. It's pretty obvious, I would say, that the reason why they were pulled over is because they're Latino men. Their immigration attorney says it should not have happened because five of the six have their

paperwork in order with pending asylum cases. Valid work permit not even close to be expired and no criminal records, not here, not in Nicaragua. Losing these six men is losing a third of his workers. We're not able in Key West to just replace people as easily as say a big city. It's financially as well as emotionally. It takes a toll. You get to know these guys, you become their friends, just not an employer, but a friend.

And you see what happens to their family. It's quite a shock.