Ramesh Nyberg
A Badge by Any Other Name: 60 Years of Law Enforcement Rebranding
In September of 1982, I could not have been more excited in my young police career. I was leaving the North Miami Police Department, a 90 man agency in the north central part of a sprawling county, then known as “Dade County.” For those of you who enjoy history, the name came from Major Francis Langhorn Dade, an army commander who was killed during the mid-1800’s “Seminole Wars” in a battle near Lake Okeechobee. (There, take that little tidbit to your next happy hour and see how many barstools empty out around you when you start rambling about Florida history. By the time you get to the part about the Seminole Wars, you should have the bar to yourself.)
North Miami was my second police department, the first being its neighbor, Opa-locka, a smaller inner-city environment. I didn’t want to be one of those police “journeymen” who hopped from agency to agency, but I did want to work as a homicide investigator and North Miami didn’t have that opportunity. Therefore, my next – and last – stop was the county, known then as the “Metro-Dade Police Department.” I was going from the pond to the ocean, a place where I could not only work homicide, but also had a multitude of specialized investigative units to work. Besides that, there were eight patrol districts I could be assigned to, each one bigger than the city of North Miami itself. Prior to being called the Metro-Dade PD, however, the agency bore the name Metropolitan Public Safety Department, or “PSD.” Some folks, mostly its own personnel, just called it the “Metro Police.” If you haven’t figured it out already, this column focuses on how politicians toy with names and titles and end up confusing the hell out of everyone.
Let’s back this up a bit.
Prior to this agency being called PSD or Metro Police, it was the Dade County Sheriff’s Office. That’s because every county in Florida has a sheriff’s office, servicing all the unincorporated areas of their county and manning the county jail as well. This might be a similar setup where you are. Back in the day, the Dade Sheriff’s Office had an elected sheriff and everything was hunky-dory in terms of being aligned with the rest of the state. Ah, now bring in 1957, and there was an apparent need to reflect a more modern, cosmopolitan community. After all, Miami Beach was teeming with Hollywood stars and tourists from around the world, so having a law enforcement agency with “Sheriff” in its name and calling the officers “Sheriff’s Deputies” was just a little too backwoodsy for the public image. By the way, the word “sheriff” comes from the old English way of naming the law enforcer of a particular “shire” (town) the reeve – hence, the shire reeve, a title eventually bastardized and shortened to “sheriff.” (Man, am I on a roll today or what?) But, I digress…in 1966, a significant change took place which strongly indicated the direction and mindset which county government was trying to establish: no more would there be an elected sheriff. Instead, a “Director” would be appointed by the County Manager, assuming the same duties and role of a chief or sheriff. By now, the 850 man department was struggling to keep up with the burgeoning urban sprawl. And, so – what else? – a new name would soon be in order.’’
By the mid-1970s, the county’s population continued to swell and diversify when immigrants from all over the Caribbean and Latin Americas – particularly Cuban, Colombian and Haitian – began pouring in to escape dictatorships and failing economies. Maybe “Public Safety Department” wouldn’t readily identify the agency as a police force to the mostly Spanish-speaking arrivals. By this time, the immense county – larger geographically than the state of Rhode Island – had 30 separate municipalities, all with their own mayors, police departments and city councils. That should tell you just how displeased most residents were with the services of county government and that included the police patrol service which had to cover an area which stretched 57 miles from north to south and 45 miles east to west. Many people in the far reaches of suburbia weren’t getting the response time they expected and decided to form their own governments. In 1981, the agency was renamed the “Metro-Dade Police Department” (MDPD), making sure that people understood that this was their police, not some “public safety” service. The sworn personnel continued to just call themselves “Metro Police,” and some of the inner-city folks just called us ’Tro. One thing which had remained constant through the musical chairs of the agency’s name was the uniform: light brown shirts and dark brown pants with a thick light brown stripe down the side. We affectionately called our uniforms the “brown gown.” It appeared that, when I traded in my dark blue uniform of North Miami for the “brown gown” in September of 1982, we had finally found a permanent name. Then came Alex Penelas.
Penelas was a hotshot native of the county from the city of Hialeah, the second largest of the county’s growing list of municipalities. He ran for mayor of Metro-Dade in 1996 and won, and won reelection in 2000. Penelas was a cum laude graduate of the University of Miami’s coveted law school, so obviously a book smart and politically savvy dude. He used his sharp intellectual tools to carve out new, promising agendas for the county, not the least of which was to…care to guess? Right – to rename not just the county’s police agency, but the county itself. Penelas wanted tourists to know that Dade County was also home to a much more famous name: Miami. So, in 2002, we became (drum roll here) Miami-Dade County and the Miami-Dade Police Department. Confusion reigned; visitors, tourists and even some residents didn’t understand. Are we part of Miami now? Who do I pay my taxes to? And, tourists who knew nothing of the previous name wondered what this “Dade” business was all about. Back in the patrol zones, though, it was business as usual. Put the new patches on the brown gowns and get back to police work.
Then, the astounding cyclorama of this county’s dizzying history took another sharp turn. More specifically, a 180 degree turn. In a special election in January 2025, the voters (probably 25-30% who typically show up for such things) elected to revert the county’s police force back to being a sheriff’s office again. For the first time in some 60 years, our officers are again called “sheriff’s deputies” and we again have an elected sheriff. By charter, we were always the sheriff’s department – it says so on my retired badge, encased in Lucite. The badge is a typical looking police badge and says “Police Officer” on it. But, when you look closer, the middle of the badge bears a sheriff’s star and the title “Deputy Sheriff.” So – and perhaps finally – we are now the Miami-Dade County Sheriff’s Department. The newly elected sheriff is Rosie Cordero-Stutz, who once worked as a young detective in homicide with me. I’m not crazy about politics in law enforcement, but I’m happy for her.
It’s Labor Day weekend as I write this, so I hope you are all enjoying it. Our labor is never done and our work is not much different than it was when there were four patrol cars to cover a vast, mostly wilderness “Dade County.” For the politicians, it’s all about “optics,” isn’t it? And, for us, we just keep plugging along, wearing whatever patch they put on our sleeves and doing our work. At this point, my Lucite-encased badge looks like a time capsule of county politics.
Ramesh Nyberg retired from law enforcement in November 2006 after 27 years of police work. He lives in Miami and teaches criminal justice at a local high school. He also teaches regional law enforcement courses through Training Force, USA. He enjoys getting feedback from readers and can be reached at ramesh.nyberg@gmail.com. Also, Ram has written a new book, Badge, Tie and Gun: Life and Death Journeys of a Miami Detective, which is available on Amazon in both Kindle eBook and paperback. You can find it by visiting amazon.com/dp/B0CTQQKQTV