Miami Sets Records for Crime

Miami has been called the crime capital of America. The city of Miami scores worse than the national average in six out of seven categories, based on 2002 Federal Bureau of Investigation Crime Reports, including murders, robberies, aggravated assault, burglaries, larceny/thefts, and motor vehicle thefts. In some categories, the score is more than double the national average. How did it get so bad in Miami?

(PRWEB) February 17, 2004 --In 1980 the Miami area had a deserved reputation as a haven for drug dealers, criminals, and a host of other disreputable people. Colombian drug lords were importing tons of cocaine into South Florida, and the corrupting influence of millions of dollars of drug profits was pervasive. The Mariel boatlift had just begun, Fidel Castro having emptied his jails of thousands of violent criminals, social outcasts and mental patients, and the area would soon experience one of the most damaging and deadly race riots in U.S. history. The resultant murder and mayhem in Miami fell on a police department in transition from a bailiwick of Southern good-old-boy nepotism to a cosmopolitan agency dealing in international issues and crimes.

Into this arena entered a young cop named Nelson Andreu. Nelson worked in uniform patrol for just 10 months before being transferred to the Homicide Unit. Murder is usually considered the most serious of crimes, and metropolitan police homicide detectives tend to be the best and brightest. In 1980 Miami, the Homicide Unit challenged its officers with a sharp learning curve. There were no homicide schools, no classes for new detectives, and no sympathy for those who couldnt perform. In those days it wasnt uncommon for the Miami Police to get two or three separate murders in just one 24-hour period. A rookie detective like Nelson might have only a week or two before he would be handling multiple murders as the lead detective.

And handle them he did! The average Miami police officer might receive ten to twenty written commendations during a normal career. Nelson Andreu has received more than one hundred such commendations from the Police Department, the Miami-Dade County States Attorneys Office, the United States Attorneys Office, the Federal Bureau of investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and other federal agencies for his fine and meticulous work. He was selected as the Most Outstanding Officer of the Miami Police Department on numerous occasions. The Dade County Association of Chiefs of Police on three occasions has selected him as the Most Outstanding Officer in the entire county.

While working as a detective, he chose to ease the tensions of the day by writing at night. He used his daily experiences to depict what really happens in detective work, unlike what TV detective series presently do. The result of his writing is an exciting police novel, Dead Red, just published by American Book Publishing and available at a discount online at the Publisher Direct Bookstore. It details the steps of a major homicide investigation--autopsies, trial preparation, evidence collection, meetings with prosecutors, medical examiners, informants and others, and many more of the intricate, unseen procedures of a "real" homicide investigation.