Miami Officers Accused of Racketeering

Seven suspended or former Miami police officers used their police jobs to run a drug operation that used murders, threats and bribery, according to a federal indictment unsealed Friday.

State prosecutors said they were dropping earlier charges, including first-degree murder counts against three of the officers. Four defendants are charged in the 21-count federal racketeering indictment with five civil rights violations, including killings.

The indictment names four slaying victims, including three reputed cocaine smugglers who drowned last July 28 when they allegedly were forced into the Miami River by police during a cocaine rip-off, and a man whose body was found in a dump last August.

Attorney Roy Black, representing Officer Roman Rodriguez, said the decision to drop the state counts, including murder charges against Rodriguez, Armando Estrada and Armando Garcia, shows “the tremendous weakness in the state’s cases.”

The maximum penalty for violating civil rights by murder is life in prison. The civil rights counts are against Rodriguez, Estrada, Rodolfo Arias and Arturo de la Vega.

The seven officers were charged as part of police and federal investigations that have resulted in criminal or administrative charges against at least 30 of the 1,050-member city police force.

Rodriguez, Estrada and Garcia have been held without bond since their arrest Dec. 27. The other four defendants, freed on state bonds, were arrested Friday on the federal indictments returned the day before.

Ricardo Aleman, Arias, Estrada, De la Vega, Garcia, and Rodriguez, all officially classified by the city Police Department as relieved of duty with pay since December, are charged with carrying out “a pattern of racketeering activity including multiple robberies, murders, conspiracy to commit murder and possession with intent to distribute narcotics” from September, 1984, until their arrests.

The indictment charges them and former Officer Osvaldo Coello with conspiracy to commit racketeering and possession of cocaine and marijuana with intent to distribute. Aleman also was charged with possession of an unregistered silencer.

The maximum penalties for the federal counts include 20 years in prison and a $25,000 fine for conspiracy to commit racketeering and for racketeering; 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for possession of cocaine with intent to distribute, and five years and a $15,000 fine for possession of marijuana with intent to distribute.