The only problem is that none of them were as quick to follow through with the requirement that this report needed to be forwarded to the Risk Management Department as stipulated in the 4th page of the report form.

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The first thing I did when I heard about this incident was to go to the Police Department's Record's Office to get a copy of the accident report.  The second thing I did was go to Risk Management to get a copy of Vehicle Damage Report.

Ten months after the accident, the report had never been forwarded to Risk Management as required, which in turn resulted in my going to the Traffic Homicide's Offices west of 27th Avenue, where I was told to go to Records, and then a 3 week runaround before I finally was given this document.

THE THREE AMIGOS - WHO WAS MAJOR DAVID SANCHEZ THAT HE WARRANTED THIS KIND OF SPECIAL TREATEMENT?

If you've been reading my stories about Chief Llanes and the destroyed homicide evidence, you'll have seen the screen grab below that I've used to accompany some of those stories.

The photo at the left behind the Chief shows 3 Miami police officers. Those officers are Chief Llanes, retired Assistant Chief Jorge Gomez, and the short guy in the middle is retired Major David Sanchez.

Some folks in the department used to call them the Three Amigos, because they supposedly made a pact that if any of them ever reached the rank of Chief, he would make sure to take care of the other two.

When Llanes became Chief, he made Gomez the Assistant Chief of Aministration, and Sanchez as the Major in charge of Internal Affairs.

In this case, the orginial officer who answered the call was told to leave after the Traffic Homicide Investigator showed up, so instead, the report was written by Sergeant Manuel Gonzalez who at the time was the Traffic Crash Investigation Detail Supervisor - he subsequently was promoted to Lieutenant - and his report was obviously written with an eye towards covering Major Sanchez's ass.

When it came to describing the accident, Gonzalez, who was not present at the scene, chose to ignore Quintana's statement and the diagram of the accident prepared by his investigator, and instead relied on a statement Sanchez gave him.

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WHILE PROPERLY PARKED IN A PARKING SPACE AT 1744 W. FLAGLER STREET, AS I BEGAN TO MOVE FORWARD TO ANOTHER UNOCCUPIED PARKING SPACE, THE DRIVER OF VEHICLE #2 ENTERED THE SAME PARKING SPACE AND BOTH VEHICLES COLLIDED WITH EACH OTHER.

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These are the kinds of glaring omissions that you would expect the Sergeant of this specialized unit would have quickly questioned if this so-called report had been submitted to him by one of the members of his detail.

Even worse, when this report was passed up the chain of command for the required approvals, it seems to no one else seemed to be bothered by any of these unanswered questions or discrepencies. Everyone from the Sergeant to the Major in the chain of command were quick to sign off on this report.

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If you want to make sense of how the police department operates, and more importantly, how and why it has become such a dysfunctional agency, you need go no further than the cronyism that takes pace every time a new Chief has been appointed, who in turn elevates his closest pals to the positions of power within the department, whether they're qualified or compent enough to do the job.

In Gomez's case I've previously written how after becoming the Assistant Chief of Administration he went on to distinguish himself by making his office a hangout for any number of disreputable and questionable individuals and how in December of 2013 he submitted a memo informing Llanes that new containers HAD BEEN PURCHASED to replace the containers where the homicide evidence was serving as breakfast, lunch and dinner for rats, raccoons and possums and would be delivered and installed in mid January of 2014.

But of course Gomez's memo turned out to be a lie, which didn't make any difference, because lying by members of the command staff of the Miami Police Department goes hand in hand with gross incompetence and willful neglect.

As for Ernesto Quintana, the civilian who's car got dinged, he didn't have the money to get his car fixed, and as of a couple weeks ago this is what his car looked like.

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The photo above is the location of a minor traffic accident involving a high-ranking member of the Miami Police Department, that in turn became another example of how the Family and Friends Plan works to protect those favored at the expense of regular citizens in the community.

On January 8, 2016, Miami Police Major David Sanchez, who was at the time in charge of Internal Affairs, ran into a car driven by a civilan named Ernesto Quintana as he was leaving the above area.

Below is a rendering of what Miami Police Traffic Investigator D. Thompson claimed took place when Major David Sanchez drove his SUV into the car belonging to Ernesto Quintana.  I have highlighted the cars to better help you visualize the scene. Red is the Major's car and Blue is Quintana's car.

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NOVEMBER 28, 2016

Once again, this is how the Family and Friends Plan works and how politicians, high-ranking public officials and police receive protection from their bad behavior, because when it comes to screwing over the public, there is no place that does it with more impunity than.

It's Miami, Bitches!

Shortly after a regular police officer responded to the accident call, Miami Police Traffic Investigator D. Thompson arrived on the scene, and took over the investigation of the accident.

How, or why Thompson managed to show up at a minor fender bender poses it's own question, but given Sanchez's position in the police department's food chain, we can speculate that he showed up in response to a call made by Sanchez for help because after he arrived Thompson turned this fender-bender caused by Sanchez into another example of how the Family and Friends Plan works, and what Abuse Of Power looks like.

After talking with both Sanchez and the other driver, Thompson wrote that the driver of vehicle #2 claimed that, "he was not at fault for the traffic crash because he was turning into the unoccupied parking space and the driver of vehicle #1, struck him as he entered the parking space which caused minor damage to both cars."

Yet, following this explanation, Thompson added this sentence to his narrative of the accident.

          "Note: no police action was taken because of conflicting

          stories from the driver of vehicle #2."


WHAT CONFLICTING STORIES?

If there was a conflicting story - which kind of seems impossible given the clear and direct narrative that Thompson claims he received from the driver of vehicle #2 that Sanchez's car struck him from behind, supported by Thompson's own rendering of the accident then you would think that Thompson would have included those conflicting stories.

HE DIDN'T!

Instead, by claiming that there were conflicting stories from Quintana, Thompson used this so-called explanation NOT to give Sanchez a ticket, which left each party responsible for the repair of their own vehicle.

In Sanchez's case, since it was a police rental vehicle, the taxpayers were ultimately responsible for paying for the repairs, and in Quintana's case, he was left to deal with the damage to his vehicle, caused through no fault of his own.

BUT IT GETS BETTER

Anytime a city vehicle is involved in an accident, a separate report has to be written, and that report is normally written by the first officer to respond to the accident.

IN AN UNSIGNED POST ON LEO AFFAIRS A CLAIM IS MADE THAT THE PATROL SERGEANT INITIALLY DISPATCHED TO THE SCENE OF THIS ACCIDENT  WAS ORDERED BY MAJOR DAVID SANCHEZ TO CLEAR THE AREA WHEN HE WOULDN'T GO ALONG WITH THE COVERUP  

ARCHIVE

UPDATE

IT WAS A DUMB ACCIDENT, CAUSED BY A HIGH-RANKING POLICE MAJOR NOT PAYING ATTENTION, AND THEN THE FAMILY AND FRIENDS PROGRAM KICKED IN, AND YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS, A CITIZEN GOT SCREWED

This morning, in an unsigned post on LEO AFFAIRS responding to my story below, someone  has written that the patrol sergeant who was initially dispatched to the accident involving Major David Sanchez, conducted his own investigation, and when his conclusions disagreed with theconclusion reached by Traffic Investigator, he was ordered to clear the area by Major Sanchez.

ABUSE OF POWER

If these claims are true, and there's no reason that they are not, then this information only strengthens the call for a criminal investigation - in fact, ALL of this should be part of a criminal investigation conducted by an outside prosecutor not corrupted by the Family and friends Plan, especially the claim that the coverup "was finally approved by the chief of police."

I'm sure that there will be more to this story in the hours or days to come.