A Florida police officer is now facing disciplinary action after he was caught rocking a “Trump 2020” face mask while in uniform at a polling place.
According to NBC News, Tuesday, Steve Simeonidis, the chairman of Miami-Dade Democrats, posted a photograph of the officer in a tweet in which he accused him of voter intimidation while inside the Stephen P. Clark Government Center in Downtown Miami.
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“Here is @CityofMiami Police Officer Daniel Ubeda, in full uniform with badge and gun wearing his Trump mask inside of the polling location in government center,” read the post. “This is city funded voter intimidation. Ubeda should be suspended immediately.”
Although the cop was indeed wearing a name tag that read Ubeda, officials have yet to officially verify his identity. But City of Miami Mayor Francis Suarez has come forward to confirm the officer was in line to vote and pretty clearly violated department policy by sporting his Trump memorabilia while still in uniform.
However, the mayor did fall short of cosigning Simeonidis’s tweet which characterized the cop’s actions as voter intimidation.
“It’s inappropriate, it’s against departmental orders,” Suarez said Tuesday. “Police officers are supposed to be impartial, so irrespective of who the person was, whatever sign it would have been, it would have been problematic.”
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Although it’s not clear if the officer was on duty Suarez clarified that officers are permitted to vote while in uniform and also allowed to carry their department-issued firearms while voting. So the only real point of contention here is the political signage.
“One important fact is that the officer was voting,” Suarez concluded. “Had he not been voting it would have been a much more serious situation.”
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