SEE IT: Miami Police Sgt. Suspended For Tossing Jewish Seforim, Using Profanity in Shocking Video


A Miami Police Sgt. was suspended after a video went viral last week in which he is seen tossing Jewish religious books onto the bed of a pickup truck, while using an expletive to describe it, Local 10 News reported.

Sgt. Roberto Destephan, the vice president of the Miami Fraternal Order of Police, is seen holding the two clearly identifiable Seforim, including a Tanach, before tossing them onto the truck.

“Taking out the trash, dawg” he remarked. He even turned the camera around to record his face.

Miami Police Chief Jorge Colina said Destephan, who has been with the department for about 13 years, was suspended with pay pending an internal affairs’ investigation.


Brickell attorneys John and Andrea Cunill obtained the footage from an unnamed source, and released it to Local 10 News.

“I don’t know how you can watch that video and your soul not be touched,” said John Cunill, who focuses on municipal law with an emphasis on contract disputes. “Once viewing the video, we were really disturbed.”

The Miami Fraternal Order of Police released a statement saying the “heavily edited” and “doctored” video was several years old, and released as political “blackmail” to stop Destephan’s re-election campaign within the union.

Destephan and union President Ed Lugo are running against brothers Tommy and Matt Reyes.

In recent days, people have posted negative campaign ads about Destephan and Lugo on Instagram, signaling a contentious race.

The union’s statement also said the video was shot while Destephan was cleaning the union office and “the books were contaminated due to the mold and termites and needed to be discarded into the trash.”

The union headquarters had been a Jewish funeral home decades before and the books had been left behind.

Meanwhile, friends and colleagues have defended Destephan and say he is not anti-Semitic.

Miami Police Union Treasurer Andrew Markowitz, who is Jewish, has been Destephan’s friend and colleague more than a decade.

“I’m friends with him, spent time with him on work and off work. Our families have spent time together. I’ve never heard him utter anti-Semitic remarks – nothing of that nature,” Markowitz said.

Markowitz thinks the video was a joke gone wrong.

But an online message board for Miami officers simmered with language that often overlooked Destephan’s speech in the video. Anonymous posters speculated that everyone from Destephan’s competitors to Chief Colina and city officials were behind the video’s release.

There were some dissenters, however.


(Nat Golden – YWN)


  1. are these union people normal/ I don’t think so. He is being blackmailed? Give me a break! The moranic idiot is talking while throwing away Seforim outright anti-Semitic stuff, is that because they were moldy? that’s his reason for saying and using anti-Semitic language? That police union should be ashamed for trying to put such nonsense over us, they should be thrown into the garbage, because that is what they are , GARBAGE!

  2. I don’t care if an Anti-Semite has Jewish friends. Many Jews hate their nation and heritage just the same.

    “Heavily doctored video”? No problem- provide the original “undoctored” video to investigators.

  3. Once upon a time, about a century ago, there was a need for unions to protect workers from rapacious employers. Samuel Gompers and Eugene Debs, both Socialists bordering on Communists, perhaps served some purpose, without verifiable proof, before many of our grandparents were born. Those times have passed. All unions do today is enrich union leaders and protect those who should lawfully be fired. The mere fact that this jerk was suspended with pay pending an internal affairs’ investigation is beyond due process. The film clip is all the evidence needed for him to be fired with extreme prejudice.

  4. “Heavily doctored video”? No problem- provide the original “undoctored” video to investigators.\\I agree to this.

    And whats next? throwing talmuds in fire like in old ages?