Days before she will pull deputies from a security detail for Miami-Dade’s mayor, Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz says the move isn’t payback over a budget rift that left the law enforcement agency with millions less than it asked for.
“The decision to discontinue the program is not ‘retaliation’ for the County’s cuts to the Sheriff’s budget,” Cordero-Stutz wrote to Mayor Daniella Levine Cava in an Oct. 28 letter obtained by the Miami Herald. “It is based on a careful assessment of operational priorities and available resources.”
Miami-Dade’s Democratic mayor hadn’t used the word “retaliation” in her own letter protesting the decision by the county’s Republican sheriff to end a longstanding practice of plainclothes officers serving as drivers and bodyguards for elected officeholders…