Astoundingly, Pichel, one of the most well-connected cops in city history, now sits on the City of Miami's code-enforcement board. He's been photographed with Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo skulking around the bar Ball & Chain after dark.
And now Pichel is running for the City of Miami Commission in what is now becoming a crowded District 1 race.
Reached by email, Pichel claims all the accusations levied against him in the past were made because he leaked evidence of other police wrongdoing to the media. (Pichel later lost a whistleblower suit against the city, according to the Miami Herald.)
"Just so you know all the misconduct were
Pichel filed campaign paperwork with the city February 1, according to city records available online. Blogger Al Crespo first published a flyer Pichel is spreading for a recent fundraiser at the Melreese Country Club:
Francisco Pichel Campaign
Other candidates include Eleazar Melendez, the former spokesperson for Miami Commissioner Ken Russell; Horacio Aguirre, the former head of Miami's Civilian Investigative Panel and other city groups; and auto parts dealer and former zoning board member Miguel Gabela. Gabela previously ran against Gort for District 1 and lost.
Infamously, Pichel was relieved of duty in April 2000 after the death of Elew Albert Vazquez-Collazo, a 44-year-old prisoner who died under mysterious circumstances in Miami Police custody. After arresting Vazquez-Collazo that year, officers transported him to Jackson Memorial Hospital, where he was examined for all of 25 minutes, according to reports from the Miami Herald. The cops then took him to the county jail, where he died four days later. After an autopsy, medical examiners determined Vazquez-Collazo died of a "ruptured spleen as a result of trauma."
Initially, the police claimed Vazquez-Collazo had fallen and busted his internal organs by accident. But it turns out Miami cops beat him to death. In April 2001, Officer Carlos Rivera pleaded no contest to a charge of felony battery and quit the police force.
Pichel was implicated in the beating but never charged. Police officials at the time claimed Pichel had ordered employees to write up false paperwork that made it seem as if Vazquez-Collazo's death were an accident.
In October 2001, Pichel filed a lawsuit against the department claiming he was actually fired because he had taken on a "corrupt and violent" gang of Miami cops and was attempting to leak information about the alleged gang to the media and FBI. (Pichel claims he had a hand in taking down Miami Police Chief Donald Warshaw, who was arrested in 2000 for allegedly stealing police pension and charity funds.)
Pichel lost that suit, but he was ultimately reinstated by MPD anyway after the city's Civil Service Board cleared him. He ultimately became the sergeant-at-arms at Miami City Hall — one of the officers tasked with providing security for city commissioners. In 2003, he was fired after allegedly leaking sensitive information about a rape case to the Herald. Pichel allegedly warned the Herald that the department had not been processing sexual assault evidence in a timely manner. But Pichel quickly got his job back after city commissioners complained that then-police chief John Timoney had seemingly fired a whistleblower.
Pichel did not hold onto his job for long. In 2006, he was arrested for allegedly selling steroids and Cialis on the side. According to Herald clips at the time, an informant had tipped off MPD that Pichel was selling testosterone under-the-table to patrons at a Gold's Gym in Coral Gables. The informant said he'd bought steroids and erectile-
At the time, then-Miami Commissioner Tomás Regalado (who later became mayor) claimed the whole affair was retaliation for being an outspoken cop who criticized police chiefs and "rubbed elbows" with city officials. But Pichel ultimately pleaded no contest to a single charge of
According to former Herald columnist Daniel Shoer Roth, Pichel was also a close ally of Miguel Exposito, who faced numerous corruption allegations when he took over as chief of MPD in 2009. The city commission ultimately fired the embattled Exposito in 2011 amid a federal civil rights investigation into the massive number of black and brown civilians shot to death by Miami cops. (Exposito was fired for another issue.)
Pichel magically made it back to yet another city dais, however, and sat on the code-enforcement board until resigning this year to run for commission. In his time running the city code bureau, he once again got himself mixed up in some classic Miami tomfoolery: Last year, he was photographed outside the Little Havana bar Ball & Chain alongside city Commissioner Joe Carollo. Another holdover from Miami's 1990s glory days as a nonfunctioning banana republic, Carollo has been accused of illegally attacking Ball & Chain with illegal code complaints, all because the bar's owners supported Carollo's 2017 election
Via (his fairly confusing) email, Pichel says he'd like to sit on the city commission in order to help the poor. "I'm running and I'm giving up
