Florida: Police Chief Admits Targeting Black Americans

On Tuesday, Raimundo Atesiano, former police chief of Biscayne Park (Florida) admitted to having orchestrated a scheme to frame innocent black men to improve his department’s property crime records.

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The police chief’s attempt to sway justice were in vain, “When I took the job, I was not prepared,” and “I made some very, very bad decisions,” he told Atesiano to K. Michael Moore, a U.S. district judge, who sentenced him to three years in prison.

Atesiano’s lawyers argued he had targeted people with past criminal records, also to no avail.

In September, Atesiano had been previously involved in an investigation regarding a conspiracy charge for charging the men with no legal basis, in violation of their civil rights. The ex-police chief received a 10-year conviction for this crime.

Biscayne Park is a village of 3,000 residents located in the Miami-Dade County.

Two ex-officers were sentenced along with Atesiano, each to one year in prison for aiding to carry out the scheme.

  “Usually, when police are trying to manipulate numbers, they will suppress the number of crimes actually committed by losing reports or not including it in the numbers reported to the city council," said Kyle McLean, a criminologist at Florida State University, to Vice. “But officers artificially lowering the crime rate by picking people at random and charging them with unsolved crimes? That's unheard of."

The three black men who were the victims of the conspiracy were falsely arrested for committing burglaries and break-ins.