2 officials face charges after breaching public safety
Two men tasked with overseeing public safety in Miami-Dade County are facing serious charges
By Dannielle Garcia, Aaron Page
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DORAL, Florida (WSVN) — Two men tasked with overseeing public safety in Miami-Dade County are facing serious charges, accused of violating the same safety and trust they swore to enforce.
50-year-old Omar Fernandez, a Miami-Dade Corrections Division chief, was arrested on Tuesday after, officials said, he crashed into a woman’s car while driving his state-issued vehicle under the influence.
The woman’s teen son was asleep in the car at the time of the crash at the intersection of Southwest 88th Street and Mills Drive in Kendall on Sunday night.
According to the arrest report, Omar was asleep at the wheel at the time of the arrival of responding troopers, slurring, mumbling, and incoherent.
When he was given a breath test, his blood alcohol levels came back at “.236 and .231,” nearly three times the legal limit. According to the arrest report, Omar also failed every other element of the field sobriety test.
On Tuesday, 7News visited his home to gather his perspective, but a family member responded, declining to comment.
Across the county, 53-year-old Manuel Fernandez also had little to say after bonding out of jail on Tuesday.
The former Miami-Dade Fire Rescue lieutenant is facing 11 counts of video voyeurism after authorities accused him of secretly recording his coworkers. Police say the camera, disguised as a wall charger, was placed in employee-only bathrooms across two separate fire stations between February and April 2023. The hidden camera was eventually found by an MDFR employee on April 1, 2023, according to detectives, with a memory card containing over 600 video clips showcasing male and female firefighters in vulnerable positions.
According to the arrest report, he filmed 18 different employees, 11 of whom have been positively identified and stated that they never granted Fernandez consent.
“You were a lieutenant for the fire department,” said 7News reporter Marisela Burgos. “Did you put those cameras in the bathroom?”
“No idea,” he said.
When 7News asked why they were accusing Manuel Fernandez, he left in a waiting car with no response.
Detectives said a subsequent review of shift records linked Manuel as the only employee working at both Station 69 and Station 66, the two locations where the hidden camera was used.
As of Wednesday morning, Manuel Fernandez retired from MDFR months after the cameras were discovered. He moved away from Miami-Dade County and returned a few years later to turn himself in. Omar Fernandez has been bailed out of jail and is also without a job pending the outcome of the investigation.
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