On October 20th, Miami Police Chief Rudy Llanes appeared in a video that the department posted on You Tube in a misguided effort to address the news leaking out of the department that hundreds of pieces of homicide evidence stored in a shipping container under the I-95 Expressway had been destroyed.

I say misguided, because as I was able to piece together in the days and weeks following the release of that video that the Chief repeatedly lied about his personal knowledge and involvement in the 4 year process that had eventually led to the discovery that, in his words, as many as “564 cases had been potentially affected” by the destruction of this evidence.

Shortly thereafter, I submitted my first public record’s request to the Chief for a copy of the list of these cases that he had claimed in his video had been sent to the State Attorney’s Office.

I followed that up with a request to the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s office for a copy of the same list, figuring that maybe between the two requests one of these public officials might actually provide me with the list.

The first to respond was the State Attorney’s office, although the list that came from her office had been severely and illegally redacted removing  information that SHOULD NOT have been blocked out.  I got that list on December 2nd.

I kept the knowledge of receiving that list a secret to see how long it would take the Chief of Police to provide me with the department’s copy.

After repeatedly emails – some of them sarcastically written – and a threat of a lawsuit, a copy was finally provided to me on the evening of January 19th by Assistant City Attorney Juan Perez.

The document was the same, and yet it was significantly different, and in those differences, and in the information contained in a subsequent list provided by the police department which I included as part of my last story, you can get an understanding of not only how both the State Attorney”s Office and the police department have been trying to manipulate and control the information contained in the original list of cases, but more importantly, how these two versions reveal that even now, 3 months after the information was first leaked about the destroyed evidence, no one in authority is ready, or willing to tell the truth about was actually occurred.

THE STATE ATTORNEY’S COPY OF THE LIST

When I received the list from the State Attorney’s office, it came with the following message.

Some of you might consider that the decision to “redact all the case numbers to avoid a labor fee for the search for potential confidentially/ exempt cases,” was a thoughtful gesture done to save me a few dollars, but bear in mind this is the same State Attorney’s Office who I’ve accused of countless illegal and unethical acts, and I can assure you that the redaction of the case numbers was not a thoughtful gesture, but rather one intended to make it almost impossible for me, or anyone for that matter, to learn the identity of any of the individuals whose cases were impacted by the failure of the Miami Police Department to protect this homicide evidence.

By removing the case numbers, the only tracking numbers that could be used to research these cases were the Property Receipt Numbers that hadn’t been redacted, and the only way that I or anyone else could obtain information by using the Property Receipt Numbers would be to get inside the Miami Police Property Room and access their computer system.

To make doubly sure that neither I, or anyone I might seek help from could learn anything more about these cases, not only were the case numbers redacted, but also the Court Case # and the various Categories Of Death.

The removal of the Court Case #’s made it impossible to use the Miami-Dade Clerk of Court’s website search to gain any information on these cases.

And just to make sure that I wasn’t aware that there were Court Case #’s available, the State Attorney’s Office went so far as to remove a portion of the header in the list that had originally read, In Custody/Court Case #.

Below you find another, complete copy of this document that I received from the Miami Police Department last week and you will see in this copy all of the information that the State Attorney’s Office removed.

In short, the State Attorney’s office not only illegally removed information from their copy of the document that was not protected by any legal exemption, but in doing so they also failed to reveal all of the information that they removed, which beyond violating Florida Public Records Law is tantamount to engaging in Obstruction Of Justice.

This is how corrupt public official behave when they want to try and hide information.

Here is the copy of the document that the State Attorney’s Office provided me on December 6th.

List From Sao by al_crespo on Scribd