MIAMI POLICE FACE SERIES OF INQUIRIES AFTER SHOOTINGS

MIAMI, July 17 -- Stung by accusations of abuse, corruption and cover-ups,
the Miami Police Department is under intense scrutiny by federal
prosecutors and the department's own investigators, who are reviewing a
string of police shootings in recent years.

Just last week, Chief Raul Martinez dismissed a 17-year veteran of the
police force, saying that an internal investigation into a 1997 shooting of
an unarmed homeless man concluded that the officer had planted a stolen gun
at the scene. Four months ago, a federal grand jury indicted five officers
on obstruction-of-justice charges in the 1996 shooting of a 73- year-old
man who died in a barrage of 123 bullets.

The United States attorney's office is also looking into accusations of
excessive use of force, planting evidence and conspiracies to conceal
officers' actions.

"We are continuing our investigation into a number of suspect police
shootings that have occurred over the past several years in South Florida,"
said Guy Lewis, the United States attorney for the Southern District of
Florida.

Chief Martinez said the department was taking steps to regain public trust,
but he defended the police force, saying that most officers were
professionals dedicated to public service.

People close to the investigation said that the shootings included the 1995
deaths of two 19-year-old black men who were shot in the back as they fled
the scene of a robbery; the 1999 shooting of a man who pointed a toy gun at
police officers; and the possible planting of a gun in the 1999 shooting of
a robbery suspect.

At the same time, the state attorney for Miami-Dade County, Katherine
Fernandez Rundle, announced that her office was reviewing the shooting
policies of police departments in the Miami area, including those of Miami
and North Miami Beach, where a police shooting of a man in a wheelchair
last month prompted protests.

Federal authorities have been investigating more than a half-dozen police
departments across the country, said Marie Simonetti Rosen, publisher of
Law Enforcement News, a publication of John Jay College of Criminal Justice
in New York. The Miami department is the second largest of those under
scrutiny, after Los Angeles, she said.

Ms. Rosen said the situation in Miami was unusual not only for its scope
but also because it recalled a large-scale inquiry in the 1980's when the
Justice Department reviewed more than a dozen cases involving accusations
of police brutality in Miami over several years. That investigation was
announced after the acquittal of four white officers in the beating death
of a black businessman had touched off three days of riots. The violence
left 15 people dead and destroyed businesses on Miami's mostly black
northwest side.

"Miami is probably just sensitive to this issue in a way that other cities
aren't because they were almost one of the first to experience it," Ms.
Rosen said.

With the recent shootings and subsequent investigations, the wounds from
the 1980's have been reopened. Citizens' groups fear an escalation of
hostility toward the police if the investigations do not result in charges
or if there are more shootings.

"We're on the brink of a real hot summer here in Miami," said Nathaniel
Wilcox, executive director of People United to Lead the Struggle for
Equality, a consortium of more than 50 church and community groups created
after the 1980 riots.

Last month, the organization held a news conference with other civil rights
groups to announce that it was asking the city to create a civilian police
review board.

Mr. Wilcox said the department had systemic problems of brutality and
cover-ups. "We're saying we are not going to sit back and allow this to go
on," he said.

One case at the center of public attention is the death of Richard Brown,
the 73-year-old man. In March 1996, the police entered Mr. Brown's
apartment on a drug warrant and sprayed his bedroom with 123 bullets after,
they say, he fired on them. Mr. Brown was hit by nine bullets and died in a
closet, slumped over a laundry basket. His daughter, Janeka, then 14, hid
in a bathroom.

The indictments in the Brown case prompted renewed pleas by civic groups
for further investigations into other shootings around that period. In
addition, some of the shootings under investigation are nearing the statute
of limitations for bringing criminal charges in the cases.

Citizens' advocates and lawyers who have sued the Police Department say the
Brown case reflects a broader problem of police misconduct, usually
involving black suspects and Hispanic and non-Hispanic white police officers.

The Miami police and some local and state politicians have long had
strained relationships with residents in many of the city's black
neighborhoods. And civic groups contend that the ever-present tension makes
Miami and some other large cities vulnerable to civil unrest anytime there
are high-profile clashes between citizens of one race or ethnicity and
officers of another.

Miami's population is 65.8 percent Hispanic, 19.9 percent black, 11.8
percent non-Hispanic white and 2.5 percent other ethnic groups. In the
Police Department, 54.2 percent of officers are Hispanic, 27.6 percent are
black, 17.9 percent are non-Hispanic white and 0.45 percent are listed as
other ethnic groups, according to department statistics.

"It's always the same thing," said Barbara Heyer, the lawyer who
represented Mr. Brown's daughter in a civil suit the city settled last year
for $2.5 million. "You have throw-down guns that somehow miraculously
appear. You have shootings that are questionable, that should have been
investigated thoroughly. This department does not hold these officers
accountable."

Representatives of Miami's police officers disagree.

"We think there was an abuse of power by the U.S. attorney's office," said
Al Cotera, president of the Fraternal Order of Police in Miami. "A lot of
it has to do with political pressure applied by certain sectors of the
community, certain civil-rights-type groups."

Lawyers for the officers in the Brown shooting say their clients are being
unfairly singled out in a case with racial aspects. The officers are
Hispanic, and Mr. Brown was black. The lawyers also argue that their
clients should not have been charged since investigations by the Police
Department's internal affairs division and shooting review board, as well
as an inquest presented by the state prosecutor, all concluded that the
shooting was justified.

"Five very experienced defense attorneys have yet to figure out where the
crime is," said Harry Solomon, who represents one of the officers, Eliezer
Lopez.

Mr. Lopez and the other officers, Jose Acuna, Ralph Fuentes, Arturo
Beguiristain and Alejandro Macias, are charged with conspiring to obstruct
justice in the shooting. If convicted, they face 10 years in prison and a
$250,000 fine each.

Mr. Lewis, the United States attorney, said, "It is clear, we believe,
based on the evidence presented, that there was planting of evidence and
false statements given regarding the follow-up investigation."

For its part, the Miami Police Department is reviewing all police shootings
in the 1990's and is cooperating with the federal investigation.

Mayor Joe Carollo, who has a strained relationship with the police and was
arrested in February on a charge of domestic abuse, did not return calls
seeking comment.

Another incident that has attracted the attention of federal authorities
and citizens' groups was the 1997 shooting of a homeless man in Coconut
Grove, a Miami neighborhood. Officers who were involved said the man was
holding a gun, but a department review concluded he had only a radio with
him. It was this shooting that prompted the dismissal last week of a police
officer, Jesus Aguero, after a hearing by an internal disciplinary board.

Mr. Aguero, who had been the subject of more than 50 internal affairs
complaints, was acquitted in March of planting evidence. He is due to stand
trial on grand-theft charges in October; he is accused of stealing the gun
found on the man from another crime scene. Mr. Aguero and two other
officers are awaiting trial on perjury charges.

Mr. Solomon, the lawyer representing one of the officers in the Brown case
and who also represents Mr. Aguero, denied that the Coconut Grove case was
an example of misconduct.

"I find it ironic that they would fire him over an incident for which a
jury who heard evidence the board never did found him not guilty," Mr.
Solomon said. "It's pretty obvious that they are using Officer Aguero as a
scapegoat in an effort to improve the Police Department's public image."

But Barry Greff, a lawyer who has won civil judgments against the city and
the police, contends that police brutality and corruption in Miami stems
from an "us against them" culture.

"The problem has become that the police are policing themselves and they
don't have a general concern that their actions will be tested to a point
they would have to suffer some type of retribution," Mr. Greff said.

"People also do not like to convict police officers," he said, "so
sometimes their actions go unchecked."