Golf-cart traffic stop deepens beef between Miami Beach police, city commissioner

When Miami Beach Commissioner David Suarez was pulled over in South Beach in June for allegedly texting while driving his golf cart, he waited for an officer to let him go on his way.

But after about 45 minutes of waiting alongside his wife and kids, Suarez — a harsh critic of the city administration, including the police department — had enough. He called Police Chief Wayne Jones and asked him why the traffic stop was taking so long, according to the Miami Beach Police Department and the police union president.

Jones called the district captain for the area and told him to look into it. The captain relayed the information to a lieutenant, who then called the officer who had stopped Suarez, Pedro Socarras.

Socarras later flagged that phone call to the union president, Bobby Hernandez, saying he feared retaliation if he chose not to drop the four citations he issued to the commissioner — for texting while driving, failing to provide proper registration, having an expired registration and not wearing a seatbelt, per county traffic records.

The June 19 incident has escalated tensions between Suarez and Miami Beach police as the commissioner presses for reforms within the department. Suarez already had a rocky history with the department after he excoriated Jones at a public meeting in 2024 over the chief’s handling of a pro-Palestinian protest. Now, Suarez is taking aim at the department’s overtime practices and accountability for misconduct, part of what he has framed as a broader effort to cut waste and clean up City Hall. The police union, meanwhile, is accusing Suarez of calling in favors and then retaliating.

At the scene of the traffic stop, Officer Socarras felt the lieutenant who called him was “implying” he should drop the citations, though the lieutenant didn’t say that explicitly, Hernandez told the Miami Herald.

“I don’t want any ramifications if I don’t,” Socarras said, according to Hernandez.

Suarez paid fines for the citations, and the cases are now closed, county records show.

The Herald requested body-camera footage of the traffic stop, but police have not yet released it.

A police department spokesperson, Christopher Bess, told the Herald that Suarez didn’t ask the chief for any favors related to the citations during their conversation. And he said the chief didn’t direct his subordinates to drop the citations, but rather asked them to make sure the situation was being handled appropriately.

After receiving the call from Suarez, Bess said, the chief “notified the District Captain to ensure awareness of the incident and to confirm that the traffic stop was being handled in accordance with Florida law and the Miami Beach Police Department’s Standard Operating Procedures.”

“At no point did Chief Jones, or any other Department supervisor, direct or imply that Commissioner Suarez should receive different treatment than any other member of the public,” Bess said.

Still, Hernandez said he believes the intent was clear.

“What did you expect to happen after that phone call?” Hernandez said, adding: “The average citizen in Miami Beach can’t call the chief when they’re pulled over.”

Hernandez said the stop was delayed after Socarras ran the license plate on Suarez’s golf cart, and it didn’t match the registration.

In a statement to the Herald, Suarez said he believes the incident was related to his questioning of the police department regarding an internal affairs case involving Socarras. The Herald had reported in May that Socarras was one of four officers investigated by the police department for exchanging sexually explicit pictures and videos through WhatsApp chats between 2016 and 2021, something that caught Suarez’s attention.

The commissioner said this week that he does “not believe it was a coincidence that after I began questioning this case, one of the officers identified in the story pulled over my pregnant wife and I while our baby and young children were in the golf cart, kept our family on the side of the road for roughly 50 minutes, and issued me four citations.”

READ MORE: Miami Beach cop faced an FBI child porn probe. Could he still be the next chief?

Commissioner has questioned police spending

Days before the traffic stop, Suarez proposed that Miami Beach create an online portal listing all city employees’ pay. The portal was green-lit June 24 and went live in early July, revealing that some police and fire officials took home nearly a half-million dollars in 2025 despite having base salaries under $200,000.

In an email to residents, Suarez pledged to address “excessive overtime” by “establishing responsible overtime limits, fatigue-management standards, higher-level approval for excessive overtime and greater public reporting.”

“No resident wants a police officer, firefighter or other critical employee working so many hours that exhaustion could affect judgment, productivity, or overall health,” Suarez wrote. “Our employees deserve safe schedules, and our taxpayers deserve reasonable safeguards.”

Bess defended the department’s approach in response to questions from the Herald.

He noted that the department “has experienced significant reductions in crime, faster emergency response times, and increased proactive policing, all while providing public safety for hundreds of special events each year in one of the nation’s busiest tourist destinations.”

“Those outcomes are made possible by the men and women of this Department, who routinely work nights, weekends, holidays, and extended deployments away from their families to keep our community safe,” Bess said. “Their compensation reflects the operational demands of policing a world-class city and the extraordinary commitment and sacrifice required of the officers charged with achieving success.”

READ MORE: How much money do Miami Beach city employees make? The data is now online

Suarez placed an item on the July 22 commission agenda calling for discussion of overtime practices in the police and fire departments.

In addition, he sponsored a separate item to talk about the police department’s “employee conduct policies, disciplinary standards, and public trust safeguards.”

Ahead of the meeting, Hernandez, the union president, shared an image of the agenda item on social media and referenced the June traffic stop.

“Funny coming from an elected official who now seems upset about being held to the same standard he publicly demands for everyone else,” Hernandez wrote. “When enforcement applies to everyone, it means everyone.”

Hernandez continued: “Using public office to seek preferential treatment or intimidate law enforcement officers because you received lawful citations is a slippery slope and raises serious ethical concerns. Accountability cannot be selective. We’re confident the appropriate oversight agencies will be paying close attention.”

The agenda item wasn’t called for discussion at the July meeting.

Hernandez told the Herald that the perception among some officers is that Suarez is targeting the police department after receiving the citations.

He said that, shortly after the traffic stop, Suarez filed a request for public records related to the disciplinary history of Socarras and other officers.

“Now it’s like a tit-for-tat,” Hernandez said. “There are no coincidences in politics.”

In his statement to the Herald, Suarez hit back at the union president, highlighting the fact that Hernandez previously said he viewed the internal investigation into Socarras and other officers as a “political hit job.”

“His outrage was not directed at the conduct uncovered, but at the investigators who exposed it, and that speaks volumes about Bobby Hernandez’s priorities,” Suarez said.

Three of the WhatsApp messages sent by the officers, including one sent by Socarras, were flagged as child pornography after Capt. Steven Feldman allegedly uploaded them to a Dropbox folder, according to an internal affairs report. Feldman was investigated by the FBI but wasn’t charged. Socarras, Feldman and two others received internal letters of reprimand but no other discipline.

Feldman has since been promoted to major, and his name has been floated as a possible successor to Jones as police chief.

Suarez shared with the Herald a copy of a July 18 request he sent to city officials, seeking records related to the internal affairs investigation and requesting a review by the city’s inspector general. He wrote that he “immediately began looking into the matter” after the Herald story was published in May and said he was “deeply concerned that the discipline imposed appears to have been limited to written reprimands.”

Suarez has history of conflict, pushing for change

The June incident wasn’t the first time Suarez’s golf cart had been the subject of controversy.

Last November, around 2 a.m. on Election Day, Suarez’s brother-in-law was arrested for driving an unregistered golf cart belonging to Suarez after allegedly taking part in an effort to remove campaign signs.

Miami Beach police said they reviewed video that showed someone “tossing a campaign sign over a gate” before entering a black car that drove away. That vehicle, a report said, “was later determined to be driven by Commissioner David Suarez.”

The case against Suarez’s brother-in-law was later dropped, records show.

Suarez has been a lightning rod for conflict since he was elected to the City Commission in 2023, critiquing the city administration while pushing for significant changes.

Among the issues he has championed are a crackdown on outdoor sleeping and measures to prevent people from living on boats in Biscayne Bay.

He has also called for stricter enforcement of traffic laws. At a December 2023 commission meeting, Suarez blasted the city administration for failing to address what he described as “a pattern of lawlessness on the streets.” After Jones said Miami Beach police write about 60,000 traffic tickets each year, Suarez responded that “maybe it should be 160,000.”

READ MORE: ‘Not man enough?’: Bodycam shows Miami Beach commissioner’s confrontational approach

Recently, Suarez has been focused on what he views as spending run amok. He led a charge to direct the city to prepare a budget based on a “rolled-back” millage rate aimed at limiting tax increases, citing city spending that has grown substantially in recent years.

This year, each city department was directed to prepare a budget with 5% reductions to its operating costs.

At the July 22 meeting, Suarez was among several commissioners who questioned the city administration’s proposals. He accused officials of presenting a “cooked document” that intentionally put critical city services on the chopping block, giving elected officials little choice but to keep those items in the budget.

As one example, Suarez pointed to the police department, which had proposed eliminating sworn officers. Commissioners voted a few days earlier to restore those positions, among others, to a budget that will be finalized later this year.

Suarez previously clashed with Miami Beach police in March 2024, when he confronted Jones during a commission meeting over what he deemed to be an insufficient level of police presence at a pro-Palestinian protest outside a synagogue.

“If that was a KKK rally, things would have been different,” Suarez, who is Jewish, said to Jones.

The KKK reference ruffled feathers in the police department, particularly because Jones is the city’s first Black chief. Jones defended his handling of the protest at the time, saying in a statement that he had “unwavering commitment to the safety and well-being of every resident in our city, including our valued Jewish community.”