Miami Beach's Troubled Police Force Pays Officers in the Six Figures

Just four days later, Tavss was back on the beat. And before his shift ended, he had killed 29-year-old Lawrence McCoy Jr. Tavss said McCoy — who allegedly stole a cab and drove the wrong way on the MacArthur Causeway — had brandished a gun. As with Shehada, no weapon was discovered at the scene.

The department stood behind Tavss until September, when a drug test showed pot in his system. In November, he resigned — and picked up a $17,242.46 payout courtesy of Beach taxpayers.

Illustrations by Pat Kinsella

Illustrations by Pat Kinsella

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More About

• Manuel Chorens
• Miami Beach
• South Beach (Miami Beach)
• Harold Strickland
• Police

Lawyer John Contini has announced plans to sue the department over both the deaths. "Citizens and tourists ought to boycott Miami Beach for their own safety," Contini says. "You may hope police will protect you, but who will protect you from the police?"

One of the strangest and most disturbing stories to hit the Miami Beach Police Department unfolded just last week.

Richard Anastasi retired on December 6 after almost 14 years on the force as an officer. He left with a fully vested pension and a $23,776.54 payout for unused vacation and sick time, according to city records.

According to a criminal complaint from the FBI, Anastasi's recent trouble started just past midnight on March 11. The victim, an unnamed Russian man, went to an apartment building on West Avenue where he believed a package was waiting for him. Instead, Anastasi and an accomplice, 42-year-old Francisco Arias, forced him into a Jeep and sped away.

Over the course of the next week, they threatened to cut off the Russian man's testicles with a knife, beat him, pointed semi-automatic weapons with laser sights at his head and held pliers to his teeth, the FBI claims. They forced him to call his mom in Russia to wire money and took $1,000. At one point, Arias allegedly told the man that he was going to die and that they would "use him as fertilizer."

The pair demanded $100,000, and the victim tricked them into a meeting last Thursday at 14th Street and Collins Avenue — with the feds listening in. When Anastasi and Arias rolled up in a black SUV, the FBI swooped in for the arrest. Inside the SUV, they found a grab bag of kidnapping tools, from a shotgun and rifle to duct tape and flex handcuffs to fake police badges.

Anastasi admitted to the FBI that he'd impersonated a cop and tried to scare the victim, though he denied trying to extort money from him. He faces federal charges that could carry a life sentence.

In his 14 years as a cop, Anastasi had 17 complaints in his internal affairs files — seven of which were substantiated and resulted in reprimands or suspensions.

Harold Strickland couldn't believe what he was seeing in his old neighborhood.

It was just past 1 a.m. on a balmy Friday in March 2009, and the 45-year-old Denver native was walking to his hotel after leaving Twist, where he had caught up with friends he hadn't seen since moving to Los Angeles five years earlier.

As he headed north on Michigan Avenue past Flamingo Park, Strickland noticed a couple of men kissing in a halogen-lit parking lot.

Then, suddenly, one of the men began to sprint north. Two plainclothes cops dashed after him. Half a block later, one officer tackled the runner to the asphalt and pinned his arms.

The slower cop approached, still running, and kicked the prone man's head like a football. Over the next six minutes and 50 seconds — a time lapse captured on tape after Strickland dialed 911 — the two officers punched and kicked the young man while berating him.

Strickland stayed on the line with a 911 dispatcher as he watched. As he described the beating to an operator, he suddenly sounded confused, adding, "They're coming after me." Hazzi and Forte forced him to lie on the ground, Strickland says. Then one of them said, "We know what you're doing here. We're sick of all the fucking fags in the neighborhood."

They later filed a police report accusing Strickland of trying to break into cars — a charge clearly contradicted by the 911 call record.

"What I saw that night was hate. Hate over the fact that someone is different," Strickland says. "Hate that someone's gender or sexuality is different. In my mind and heart, it was all based on hate."

According to several Beach activists, it's just the latest abuse by a force with a spotty, decadelong history relating to gays. Of course, the latest case also involves two officers with bad records.

The Miami Beach Police Department's first modern conflict with South Beach's gay community, by all accounts, came in late 1995 and early '96 when cops raided three gay clubs — Paragon, Twist, and Glam Slam — and busted dozens of patrons on drug charges. Gay leaders saw it as a crackdown on their community.

Police soon began larger outreach efforts to bridge the gap, and later that same year, the Miami Beach City Commission asked cops and gay leaders to collaborate on a new problem: gay men cruising Flamingo Park.

Gary Knight, then a member of the Beach's gay and lesbian task force, worked with police to spread the word that the park was off-limits. For the most part, the collaboration worked, Knight says, but "one officer was abusing his role right away, spending all his time in Flamingo and harassing anyone gay," Knight recalls.