Four Miami-Dade police officers have been indicted in connection with the 2019 shooting that claimed the life of UPS truck driver Frank Ordonez, the two men who kidnapped him in Miami-Dade, and a bystander who was driving near the Miramar intersection where a standoff with police took place.
The Broward State Attorney’s Office has not confirmed the indictments, which are legally secret until they are unsealed by a judge, but South Florida Police Benevolent Association President Steadman Stahl said the officers, who have not been named, will likely surrender in court within the next week.
“We’re extremely disappointed that after almost five years, these officers are finding themselves indicted for something they had seconds to decide,” Stahl said in a statement released by the union Monday. “It sends a chilling effect to officers in Broward County, that their State Attorney’s Office prosecutes one officer for not responding to an active shooter and now indicting officers for responding to active shooters.”
The union statement is a reference to last year’s trial of former Broward Sheriff’s Deputy Scot Peterson, who was charged with multiple counts of child neglect for taking cover outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School during the 2018 mass shooting in Parkland instead of entering the school to confront the shooter, who killed 17 students and staff.
Peterson was found not guilty. Mark Eiglarsh, Peterson’s lawyer, said it was an apt comparison.
“I’ve seen firsthand how they sacrifice their own officers,” he said. “If you’re a law enforcement officer in Broward County, you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. They don’t take care of their own.”
The Miramar shooting unfolded Dec. 5, 2019, when ex-convicts Lamar Alexander and Jerome Hill hijacked Ordonez’s UPS truck after trying to rob a jewelry store on Miracle Mile in Coral Gables.
With Ordonez as a hostage, the men made their way to Broward, where official reports show as many as 20 law enforcement officers from six South Florida agencies were involved in the standoff at the intersection of Miramar Parkway and Flamingo Road.
Ordonez, Alexander and Hill died, as well as bystander Richard Cutshaw.
After the shooting, questions lingered about whether the police use of force went beyond what was necessary to handle the situation. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigated the shooting and turned its findings over to the Broward State Attorney’s Office in 2022.
Defense lawyers representing Broward police agencies said late Monday they did not believe Broward officers were among the indicted.
In an interview in December, former Hollywood police union chief Jeff Marano said he was confident the incident would ultimately be seen as a tragedy but not a crime.
“They’re going to bring in use-of-force experts who are going to show what was going through these officers’ minds when they took action,” Marano said. “We’re going to see that this was not a criminal act.”
The union statement did not indicate what charges the four officers will be facing. The grand jury could have charged anything from misdemeanor offenses to reckless endangerment and manslaughter.
Rafael Olmeda can be reached at rolmeda@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4457.
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