Miami Police Chief Manuel Manny Morales authored a graduate thesis while attending the Naval Postgraduate School in 2017 that explored the possibility and advocated for the establishment of a partnership and working relationship between the City of Miami Police Department and Cuba’s security services.
The thesis, published through the Defense Technical Information Center, examined cooperative frameworks between U.S. and Cuban police and security services. At the time, the concept may have been presented in an academic context focused on transnational crime, migration, and counter-narcotics coordination. But today, in light of the well-documented human rights abuses by the Cuban regime, and the repression that the Cuban people have experienced recently, including the July 11, 2021, and the March 2024 protests, the idea of any type of formalized cooperation raises profound concerns.
“As someone who has worn the badge for decades, I can tell you this proposal sounds naïve at best and politically tone-deaf at worst,” said a high-ranking Miami Police Officer who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution. “The Cuban exile community in Miami doesn’t speak about Cuba’s ‘police’ in theoretical terms — they’ve experienced firsthand how those forces operate as instruments of repression, not public safety. Any suggestion of partnering with agencies that intimidate and punish dissenters ignores that lived reality and risks undermining trust here at home.”
Police agencies in democratic societies are fundamentally designed to protect citizens, uphold constitutional rights, and maintain public trust. In contrast, security services in communist regimes—including Cuba—operate primarily as instruments of state control. Their mission is not crime prevention; it includes monitoring, intimidating, and punishing political dissent.
During last week’s City Commission meetings, Chief Morales came under fire from several commissioners. He was accused of campaigning for political office while on the job, as well as for staging community meetings without prior notification to the District Commissioners, according to a report from the Miami Herald.
A recent report by Human Rights Watch details how Cuban protesters have described beatings, arbitrary detention, denial of medical care, and abusive prison conditions following anti-government demonstrations. The report recounts testimonies from detainees who described physical abuse and coercive interrogations—practices consistent with a security apparatus designed to suppress opposition rather than safeguard civil liberties.
That document makes the premise of a working partnership between the city of Miami Police Department and Cuba’s security service deeply troubling. Even if framed narrowly around technical cooperation, any formal relationship risks legitimizing or normalizing engagement with agencies widely accused of systemic repression.
Miami is home to one of the largest Cuban exile communities in the world—many of whom fled precisely because of the coercive practices of the Cuban state’s security forces. For those residents, the idea that their local police department might collaborate with the same regime they escaped is not merely academic; it is personal.
“At minimum, the public deserves clarity: does the City of Miami categorically reject any such collaboration today?” said a local political observer. “And does its leadership recognize the fundamental difference between policing in a democracy and enforcement in a dictatorship?”
