The Miami-Dade Police Department is recognized as a leader in many aspects of law enforcement. However, this agency and the county that it represents have not always been the size that they are today. What is currently known as Miami-Dade County was originally established as Dade County on February 4, 1836, on the southeast tip of the Florida peninsula. The county, named after Major Francis Langhome Dade, is presently known as the “gateway to the Americas.” The current demographic makeup is multiethnic and multicultural and is richly diverse. According to the 2000 census of Florida’s sixty-seven counties, Miami-Dade is the most populous. Comprising 2,431 square miles, the county receives its primary law enforcement services and protection from the Miami-Dade Police Department.
The Dade County established in 1836 covered an area that encompassed present-day Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, and Martin counties and was policed by as few as three deputies. The department was known as the Dade County Sheriff’s Posse. The sheriffs in the early years of the county were appointed by the governor of the state. From the turn of the twentieth century through most of the 1950s, sheriff was an elected position. This form of governing was transformed into a metropolitan form of government, a two-tier federation, in 1957 when voters approved a merger of the county’s two departments, the Dade County Police Department and the Dade County Sheriff’s Office, into a single Public Safety Department. This was made possible when Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment in 1956 that allowed Dade County to enact a home rule charter.
Constitutional officers, sheriff, property appraiser, supervisor of elections, and tax collector departments, according to the Florida Constitution, were able to be reorganized and perform duties as subordinate county departments. Consequently, nonelected sheriffs were appointed by the county manager to serve as director of the Public Safety Department and as sheriff of Metropolitan Dade County, a practice that remains in place.
In 1960, this newly merged agency had 623 personnel and by 1966 the number had increased to 850. The Public Safety Department’s organizational structure was determined by metropolitan charter and included at the time the jail, fire protection, civil defense, animal control, and motor vehicle inspections. By 1973, the department had been divested of ancillary responsibilities and focused solely on police services. The agency continued to grow and during 1973 had twelve hundred employees. Today it employs more than forty-five hundred sworn and nonsworn professionals.
As the sophistication of its challenges grew, the Public Safety Department reorganized in July 1981 and was renamed the Metro-Dade Police Department. The new name remained in place until a countywide vote in September 1997, when the citizens of the county voted to change the name from Dade County to Miami-Dade County. Subsequently, in December 1997, the Metro-Dade Police Department changed its name to the Miami-Dade Police Department.
The continual increase in the county’s population, along with the departmental growth, has resulted in making the Miami-Dade Police Department the largest police department in the southeastern United States.
The Department provides an array of traditional local and specialized police services in addition to many of the services provided by a traditional sheriff’s office for the county’s nearly 2.5 million residents. There are more than 1.2 million residents in the unincorporated areas of the county who receive their primary and continuous police service through the Miami-Dade Police Department.
It should be noted that the county’s correctional duties, often associated with a sheriff’s office, are not performed by the Miami-Dade Police Department. Rather, they are conducted by a stand-alone county department. The focus of the police services rendered by the department is provided to an area of the county referred to as the unincorporated municipal statistical area (UMSA). Due largely to its duties as a sheriff’s office, many services are provided or made available to approximately thirty-five municipalities located within the county. In addition, the department offers contractual local and specialized police services to newly incorporated or existing jurisdictions.
Since 1836, the department has witnessed thirty-six members of its force make the ultimate sacrifice in the line of duty. The first recognized law enforcement official to lose his life while performing police duties in the county was Deputy Sheriff Murretus “Rhett” McGregor, who was murdered on August 9, 1895 (Wilbanks 1997), at the hands of a Lemon City saloon keeper who was being sought for a double murder.
The Miami-Dade Police Department, as of 2005, provides its professional police services directly to the citizens via nine police districts and is supported by twenty-eight specialized bureaus. Bureaus include robbery, sexual crimes, homicide, economic crimes, narcotics, warrants, strategic and specialized investigations, crime laboratory, crime scene, central records, property and evidence, personnel management, court services, and intergovernmental. Overall, the department comprises four services: departmental, investigative, police, and support. The personnel structure starts with the rank of police officer (deputy sheriff) and rises through a variety of positional classifications. The primary positions, in order of promotional advancements, are sergeant, lieutenant, captain, major, division chief, assistant director, deputy director, and director.
The diversity of the department is evident: Its personnel makeup mirrors the county’s demographics. In 1997, the department witnessed its first Hispanic director, Carlos Alvarez, who rose through the ranks, was appointed, and proudly led the agency for approximately seven years. Following his retirement, the department again witnessed a first when Robert Parker, an African American, was appointed as director of the agency after attaining and serving in nearly every rank the department has to offer.
The department has and continues to receive accolades for many of its innovative approaches to the variety of challenges it has faced over the decades. From the department’s approach to airline crashes in the Everglades and to natural disasters to its community programs and crime reduction initiatives, all have been used as models for agencies throughout the world.
