A local reporter in Miami was threatened with jail time after he asked the mayor a question in a public park.
Local 10 News reporter Jeff Weinsier approached Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava to ask her why a group of electric city buses that cost taxpayers more than $60 million were taken out of service.
Weinsier confronted the mayor during Miami’s “Baynanza” community clean-up event at Haulover Park on April 11. The reporter chose to approach Cava at the event because her office had reportedly been refusing to accept any interview requests that dealt with the decommissioned electric buses, according to Local 10.
In a video of the encounter, Weinsier approaches the mayor but is intercepted by a man in a black jacket. That man was later identified as Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office Deputy Lester Aguilar, who was serving on the mayor’s plainclothes protection detail.
“Mayor, will you give us five minutes please and just address the Proterra buses? It’s a huge taxpayer issue,” Weinsier asked.
Aguilar then stepped in and told the reporter — without identifying himself as law enforcement — that he needed to “back away.”
Weinsier said he did not need to back away and told Aguilar not to push him.
“Yes, you do, everyone needs to,” Aguilar said. “You want to go to jail?”
Weinsier replies: “For what? Standing and trying to interview the mayor?”
Aguilar does appear to physically push Weinsier in the video, though not violently. However, as Weinsier notes in his reporting of the incident, he is the the only person Aguilar seems focused on. The deputy was not pushing any of the other individuals gathered at the spot.
The deputy threatened to throw Weinsier in jail a second time after claiming the reporter touched him.
“The next time you put your hand on me you go to jail. I was just trying to do my job,” Aguilar said.
Weinsier replied, saying that he was also just trying to do his job.
Local 10 spoke to a First Amendment attorney, Thomas Julin, who reviewed the footage and said at no time did Weinsier appear to be threatening the mayor or Aguilar.
He also noted that Aguilar never appeared to have identified himself as law enforcement.
The Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office Professional Compliance Bureau has opened an internal affairs investigation into the confrontation.
The sheriff’s office said it cannot provide further comment due to the ongoing internal affairs review.
As for the buses, Cava did later comment on the situation, telling Local 10 that “we are still hopeful we can still put them into service.”
“I personally have spoken to other companies about ways to retrofit so we can move these buses forward,” she said. “I have not given up hope that we can put them into operation.”
The Independent has requested comment from the MDSO and Cava’s office.
