Former Homestead Police Officer Running for City Council has Paid the Price for Blowing the Whistle on Corruption

The corruption was so criminal, even the Police Benevolent Association called for the arrest and incarceration of fellow officers.

"The chief should go to jail. The captain should go to jail," Dade PBA president John Rivera told the Miami Herald back in 2014.

"We are hoping to see some arrests out of this."

But nobody ever went to jail.
 
However, Homestead Police Chief Al Rolle did fire former Police Captain Bobby Rea on Christmas Eve, 2013.

But that's only because Rea had reported to authorities that government officials within the Homestead Police Department were tampering with public records, which is a crime.

And Chief Rolle had signed off on the tampered records.

"I made a phone call to the state to seek advice because it was a criminal matter," Rea explained to the South Dade News-Leader in June 2014.

"I told them what I was told. I followed the advice they gave me."

It began in 2011 when Edna Marie Hernandez, a police secretary, approached then Captain Rea after her superior, Captain Marie Kent, ordered her to create a fake log sheet for records requested by another Homestead police officer, Sergeant Lizanne Deegan.

Deegan was trying to win her job back after being terminated.

She wanted to show in arbitration proceedings that she was treated more harshly than other officers who were disciplined for similar things.

But Captain Kent ordered Hernandez to create false destruction reports, so the department could deny having the records. 

After creating the fake, back-dated records, Hernandez took them to Chief Rolle and Captain Kent, who signed off on them.

Hernandez has since been given immunity from prosecution for her part in the ordeal.

She says she could have gone to a hundred other police employees about her superiors ordering her to commit records violations, including supervisors. 

Hernandez, who has been silent since the ordeal, is now speaking publicly for the first time about how she was afraid, to tell the truth, at first.

But she ultimately did the right thing.

"I chose to tell the truth. I had over a hundred employees at the police department I could disclose this to, including over a dozen supervisors. And I chose Bobby Rea."

"I didn't know Bobby Rea too well at the time. But I knew him to be honest and knowledgeable. I'll never forget his response to me. He looked right at me and said, 'I need you to understand I can't ignore what you just told me.'"

Hernandez described the immense pressure she was put under when contemplating whether or not to come forward or stay silent. And then the relief she felt after confiding in Rea.

"I started crying; I put my head down. We stood there for a minute, and he said 'I can't imagine how hard it was to tell me this," she recalled.

"Doing the right thing cost him his job. He was fired shortly after."

After reporting public records crimes to the state officials at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), Rea says he was treated with hostility — like he was an outsider — before he was eventually fired.

"Certainly, my relationship was restrained. At best," Rea recalled during an interview with the South Dade News-Leader.

"The ultimate hostile act would be the termination."

But that's all behind him.

Now Bobby Rea, a former police officer for the Homestead Police Department for 25 years, is running for Homestead city council seat 3 and would like your vote.

As part of his platform, Bobby Rea wants to focus on government transparency and public safety. 

As a former police officer, Rea thinks the Homestead Police Department should require body cams for all of its officers — just like Miami Dade's 1,500 police officers — so what happened to him doesn't happen again.

"I'm not a 'politician,'" he explains.

"I have no intention of becoming what you may expect. I'm driven by my own experiences both inside and outside of the political structure. It is that very machine that concerns me today. I'm running for city council not as an insider, but as an alternative to the status quo."

Rea would also like to focus on traffic, which he calls a "nightmare," as well as infrastructure.

Early voting begins this weekend.

The general election for Homestead will be held on Tuesday, November 5, 2019.