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There is one factor that makes Miami different from other U.S. cities: its huge Cuban population. Local black leaders disagree on whether the 20-year influx of Cubans, augmented by the recent flood of new refugees, is a serious source of black frustration or just a handy current issue. There is no doubt, though, that blacks, who now comprise only 15% of Dade County's 1.5 million residents, feel they are treated as "third-class citizens" behind the still dominant non-Latin whites, at 48%, and the Hispanics, at about 37%. The Cubans have taken some jobs that blacks always sought, particularly as employees in Miami Beach's tourist hotels.
But the far more basic cause of the inflamed black mood in Miami is the unequal treatment accorded whites and blacks accused of racially sensitive crimes. The series of what blacks took as insults began on Jan. 9 of last year when Florida State Highway Patrolman Willie T. Jones, 37, who is white, was accused of taking an eleven-year-old black girl into his patrol car and molesting her. He did not contest the charge and the county prosecutor's office acquiesced in a deal whereby Jones would receive psychiatric help rather than go to jail.
On Feb. 12, a squad of plainclothes detectives seeking a drug suspect burst into the home of Nathaniel La Fleur, a respected black Miami schoolteacher. Although La Fleur protested loudly that the police had the wrong house, the officers beat both the teacher and his son Hollis, 20. Dade County State Attorney Janet Reno, who had once earned black respect as a liberal sympathetic to their complaints, failed to secure an indictment from a grand jury. She said the police had made "a dumb mistake."
On Sept. 2, Larry Shockley, an off-duty policeman, fatally shot Randy Heath, 22, a black, in the back of the neck outside a warehouse. The officer, who was moonlighting as a security guard for the warehouse, contended that Heath had been trying to burglarize the building. Heath's sister, Theresa, 19, said her brother had merely gone to the side of the building to urinate. Again, Reno's office presented evidence to a grand jury but failed to get an indictment.
The prosecutor turned more aggressive, however, when Johnny Jones, the black superintendent of Dade County schools, was accused of attempting to use some $9,000 in school funds to buy goldplated plumbing fixtures for a vacation house he was building. A popular educator widely admired by both blacks and Miami's top white officials, Jones had tried to cover up the attempted misuse of funds. Reno quickly called a rare Saturday session of a grand jury to get him indicted; the school board called an equally unusual Sunday session to suspend him from his job. Jones was quickly convicted of theft and is awaiting sentence. Although his guilt was demonstrated, many Miami blacks saw the swift action against Jones as markedly different from Reno's failure to prosecute the physical crimes committed by white police.