Miami’s public safety circus: A sardonic welcome to new Mayor Eileen Higgins

Dear Mayor Eileen Higgins,
Welcome to the City of Miami — where the skyline keeps climbing, but our fire trucks and patrol cars struggle to keep up. If anyone tells you the city’s public safety system is “just fine,” you might want to double-check. They’re not lying, exactly — they’re just reading from old talking points and omitting some embarrassing facts.
Let’s start with the fire rescue department, with more issues than you can shake a firehouse at.
Between 2014 and 2016, 240 firefighters retired — nearly a quarter of a department already stretched thin — and the city has been trying to catch up since. There are 55 vacancies right now, and the administration is quick to point out that the bulk of those — 44 of them — are new positions that were added to the department in the last budget in October. But they were added because the are necessary to keep up with growth. In addition to a population boom, the number of office workers who come to the city each day has grown significantly in the last 10 years.
That’s why the city commission approved two new units in this budget cycle. One already in place in Liberty City and another to start in March at Melreese, now Miami Freedom Park.
As the fire department struggled to keep up and the alarms kept ringing, the city approved more high-rises, SAPs, and density incentives like confetti at Art Basel, without making sure anyone could actually respond when the sprinklers went off.
Then there’s Brickell Fire Station 4, which was famously cleared out to make way for th 64-story Mercedes tower. The decision, approved under Chief Robert Hevia and City Manager Art Noriega, wasn’t just about brick and mortar — it was about risk, judgment, and public trust. Especially since the developer had ties to real estate developer Alain Lantigua, who said he did the “zoning legwork” on the property, and later sold a home in Southwest Dade to Noriega and his wife. Coincidence? Okay.
Meanwhile, temporary fire stations are being treated as permanent. These are trailers and hangar structures for equipment on parking lots that are responding to emergencies. It’s like putting a band-aid on a broken leg and calling it a miracle.
Instagram-worthy? Absolutely. Life-saving? Debatable.
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These  includes the temporary station 4, which will be included in the new Mercedes development once it is finished. There’s another station being built at the bottom of another high-rise, the one that’s in a trailer on another developer’s property — waiting for something to be done — since February of last year.
Las malas lenguas told Ladra that Higgins met with Hevia — who makes $290,000 a year — days before she was even sworn in, and the facilities were a main part of the conversation. This is good news.
At the police department, there are major building problems and a lingering rumor that this neglect is intentional so the city can sell the property to a developer. But what we know for sure is that staffing is top-heavy and bottom-light. Under Chief Manuel Morales, the department has sprouted more executive roles than a reality show reunion special: Executive Officer to the Chief, two Senior Sergeant at Arms, four assistant chiefs, 14 police commanders, 13 majors — and probably a Chief of Paperwork — all earning $200k+ each, according to a great story about top earners at the city in the Coconut Grove Spotlight this month.
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Meanwhile, patrol officers and specialized units are running ragged, trying to cover streets, known drug areas and nightlife hotspots. It would be good for the new mayor to ask for the overtime figures.
Frontline readiness? Sacrificed. Administrative ego? Inflated. And Miami still calls this efficiency.
Then there are the promises that are quickly deferred (read: broken). Every SAP and rezoning came with gifts for the people called “public benefits”: new fire stations, substations, staffing, emergency-response upgrades. But most of these gifts? Santa apparently forgot to deliver. Delayed. Downsized. Relocated. Disappeared. Whatever means not gonna happen.
There is a vast lack of accountability. Case in point: For nearly week after he was termed out as mayor, and gave you the keys, Alcaldesa Higgins, there was still 24-hour police protection at his home on Battersea Road in Coconut Grove. The chief calls it “an oversight.” But there is no scenario where Morales — who became the chief as former Commissioner Joe Carollo played the theme from The Godfather — did not know this was happening.
Additionally, as Billy Corben pointed out in an Instagram video, there are six other supervisors between the chief — who makes $350,000 a year — and the three officers a day on patrol at the ex mayor’s house: A sergeant, a lieutenant, the commander of the district, the major, the assistant chief of uniformed personnel and the first assistant chief. That’s seven levels of accountability, including the chief — for a total of $1.5 million a year — that allegedly didn’t know three officers a day were still watching the Suarez home, as they have been for about five years.
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If it’s really an oversight, then Morales doesn’t know what’s going on in his agency and needs to be shown the door. Somebody is going to get fired. And that’s where the proverbial buck stops.
Then there’s the political theater disguised as public safety. Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago — former Mayor Francis Suarez’s unofficial hype man — recently claimed he rode along with the Miami Police chief and/or assistant chief on “more than a dozen overnight raids,” involving hotels, drugs, and human trafficking (more on that later). Did he bring reports? Arrest data? Evidence? Of course not. But hey, why let facts get in the way of a good selfie?
Human trafficking is not a social media prop. Drugs are not a punchline. Public safety is not a cameo role in a mayoral vanity project. Yet here we are.
Mayor Higgins, here’s your starter pack for cleaning up the circus:

Audit every SAP and rezoning approval. Make sure fire stations and police substations weren’t just holiday decorations for developers.
Check executive and administrative staffing. Are they chiefs of staff or chiefs of selfies? Ask the hard questions.
Prioritize frontline readiness. Firehouses, patrol cars, ladder trucks — real stuff, not props. Temporary fixes are cute for Instagram, useless when the siren wails.
Ban political ride-alongs used for narrative spins. Public safety is a service, not a campaign reel.
Reassert oversight and transparency. No more backroom deals. No blurred lines between developers, city leaders, and critical safety infrastructure.

Alcaldesa, the glittering skyline may impress tourists, but without a capable police and fire force, Miami is just a pretty postcard with sirens in the background. Aligning development with the ability to protect life and property isn’t optional. It’s the most basic job of city leadership.
So trust your first responders, the people who actually answer the calls while everyone else tweets about them. Fund them. Staff them. Respect them.
And maybe, just maybe, stop letting political theater take the place of public safety.

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