and other officials were using city funds for their own benefit. In 2016, the city manager and public works supervisor were arrested, charged with extortion of money in exchange for city permits. Both quickly pled guilty. The city's water system had been used by city workers as means of collecting money for their own use. In August 2016 the city asked the county to take over the system. Police In 2022, the city hired Broward County law enforcement officer Scott Israel as its Police Chief, replacing acting police chief Michael Steel, who had been in the position since Steve Barreira resigned in late October 2021 after just months on the job. In 2019, Israel In a 2013 editorial, the Miami Herald called the city "crime-plagued" and the police department "deeply troubled". Florida Governor Ron DeSantis suspended Israel from his Broward County position in 2019 (replacing him with Gregory Tony) citing Israel's responses to the Fort Lauderdale airport shooting and the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. Israel appealed his removal to the Florida Senate. The Senate appointed former Senate President J. Dudley Goodlette (R) to serve as special master to hear the testimony and evidence. After conducting a trial, Goodlette issued his report in September 2019, finding the removal was improper and recommending Israel be reinstated. Bob Gualtieri, chairman of the panel investigating the Parkland shooting and sheriff of Pinellas County, said he didn’t think Israel should be suspended: "He had some personnel that failed. Any law enforcement organization is going to have people that fail. And just because individuals fail doesn’t mean that the leader of the organization is a failure.” Despite the special master report and recommendation, however, the Florida Senate held a special session on October 23, 2019, and voted 25–15 to uphold the suspension. Crime In 2004, Opa-locka had the highest rate of violent crime for any city in the United States. Calvin Godfrey wrote, in a 2009 Miami New Times article, that Opa-locka was "mired in crime and sinking fast." He wrote that the police department, whose headcount had decreased from 50 to 16, had been "steadily deteriorating" for the 20-year period leading up to 2009. The Miami New Times received memorandums that, in Godfrey's words, "reveal an agency rife with controversy". In January 2005, after negative Florida Department of Law Enforcement evaluations of the Opa-locka police force surfaced, the Miami-Dade Police Department sent county commissioner