CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) RESOURCE CENTER Read More
Add To Favorites

Hialeah mayor: City's handling of cop busted in sex assault probe was 'great'

Miami Herald - 1/29/2020

Jan. 29--Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernández said Tuesday that what led to the arrest of a now federally charged cop accused of sexually assaulting several women was the "great investigation" led by his own city.

"We have done everything, this office. From the moment he was arrested, he was terminated," Hernández told the Miami Herald after a City Council meeting Tuesday night. "Everything was followed to the 't,' where, thanks to the investigation of the city of Hialeah, the FBI was able to make an arrest."

Hernández, who attacked the Herald's coverage of his city by calling it "racist," also defended Hialeah Police Chief Sergio Velázquez's handling of sexual abuse claims against former Sgt. Jesús Menocal Jr. that date back to 2015.

The chief called another journalist who has written about Menocal a "liar" and the mayor noted that the Herald had sent a "pretty, little" reporter with a "nice face" to cover the meeting.

Menocal was accused of sexually abusing four women and girls, according to a Herald investigation published in November. An internal affairs review in 2016 showed evidence of Menocal's sexual misconduct and violations of departmental policy but neither Velázquez nor the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office addressed the allegations with criminal charges or internal discipline.

Instead, Menocal received a "merit" raise.

A month after the Herald's investigation, Menocal was arrested by federal authorities after a two-year-long investigation that concluded with an indictment last December. He was accused of detaining two women, one of them 17-years-old, and coercing them into sexual contact.

"To the victims, the city of Hialeah did its part to make sure that the arrest was made and now it's up to the jury to find this officer guilty or not," said Hernández when asked if he had any message to send to the women accusing Menocal.

Records reviewed by the Herald show Menocal was also accused of impregnating a cadet while he was a law enforcement training adviser at Miami Dade College'sSchool of Justice in 2017 and told the cadet to say she had fabricated the story. No formal investigation was launched at MDC because the cadet, who had confessed she was pregnant with Menocal's baby, retracted her statement.

Velázquez, who told the Herald the cadet had "fabricated" her story, refused to answer any other questions on the issue, and said the Herald's reporting was false.

"The situation your reporter has made with his half-truths, I'm not going to waste my time and address it, Ok? I'm done," the police chief said.

"He's a liar," the chief added.

Despite the mayor's statement, the city has so far not released documents verifying that Velázquez informed federal authorities of Menocal's alleged behavior.

"I don't have that here, but if we had not given it to the FBI, how did the FBI know about it? This was a Hialeah investigation from the beginning, taken to the FBI, to the state attorney," the mayor argued. "Thanks to the great investigation, this officer was arrested and that was working with the FBI."

The Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office released emails showing it referred the case to the Justice Department's civil rights division in 2016 after declining to charge Menocal.

The city has also not provided evidence that, as Velázquez has asserted, police informed MDC of an investigation into the alleged relationship between Menocal and the 22-year-old cadet in his class.

"We brought this up," Hernández said, calling the Herald's reporting "untruthful."

"I don't know what the issue with the Miami Herald is," he added.

College officials say they never received a memo or any other indication that police were investigating Menocal's conduct.

During the council's previous two weeks earlier, the mayor harshly criticized the coverage of Hialeah's handling of Menocal, and said: "I'll challenge your editor anytime she wants to go [on] a Spanish station with me. I'll put her in her place."

Miami Herald staff writer Nicholas Nehamas contributed to this story.

___

(c)2020 Miami Herald

Visit Miami Herald at www.miamiherald.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.