Miami-Dade Police Union President Ousted After 24 Years of Defending Bad Cops

RSS Feed

Miami-Dade Police Union President Ousted After 24 Years of Defending Bad Cops

November 23rd, 2017

Awake Goy

Former Dade County Police Benevolent Association President John Rivera

For more than two decades, John Rivera was the ideal of what most cops think a police union president should be: He lied constantly, threw tantrums at even the slightest personal insult, and had zero qualms about blaming black kids for getting themselves shot by the officers he represented.

For 24 years, Rivera ran the Dade County Police Benevolent Association, the largest police union in town — a time period in which not a single on-duty officer was charged with shooting a civilian until 2017, in a case when Rivera was among the only public voices defending the officer, who shot a black man with his arms in the air.

Yesterday Rivera was voted out of running the union that represents 6,500 Miami-Dade police and correctional officers, losing to current PBA Vice President Steadman Stahl.

“The elections department has tabulated the ballots and the membership has spoken,” Rivera wrote from the official PBA Facebook account today, conceding the election. “The members have voted for change and I totally respect our system of democracy.”

Rivera was first elected to head the PBA in 1993, when he beat the incumbent union chief by only 68 votes. At the time, the then-37-year-old Rivera was a Miami-Dade Police sergeant working the midnight shift in the property section.

Almost immediately, he went to work to defeat a push by black and religious leaders to give more power to a civilian oversight group after a string of fatal police shootings. Rivera helped pack a commission meeting with cops wearing “Enough Is Enough” T-shirts and had the widows of three slain officers stand up as cops argued that more oversight would somehow kill more police officers.

Pages: 1 2

If you haven’t already, be sure to like our Filming Cops Page on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

Please visit our sister site Smokers ONLY

<!–

(function(d) {
var params =
{
id: “3c7936d6-71e2-4cba-afb4-95ed4171941f”,
d: “ZmlsbWluZ2NvcHMuY29t”,
wid: “365543”,
cb: (new Date()).getTime()
};

var qs=[];
for(var key in params) qs.push(key+’=’+encodeURIComponent(params[key]));
var s = d.createElement(‘script’);s.type=’text/javascript’;s.async=true;
var p = ‘https:’ == document.location.protocol ? ‘https’ : ‘http’;
s.src = p + “://api.content-ad.net/Scripts/widget2.aspx?” + qs.join(‘&’);
d.getElementById(“contentad365543”).appendChild(s);
})(document);
–>