{"id":203380,"date":"2026-03-24T03:05:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T03:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/203380\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T03:05:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T03:05:07","slug":"miami-beach-woman-sues-city-leaders-over-police-visit-tied-to-social-media-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/203380\/","title":{"rendered":"Miami Beach woman sues city, leaders over police visit tied to social media post"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Miami Beach woman<\/a> has filed a federal lawsuit against the city, its mayor and police chief, claiming her First Amendment rights were violated after police visited her home following a social media post.<\/p>\n

Raquel Pacheco alleges city leaders<\/a> and law enforcement retaliated against her and discriminated against her viewpoint after she posted a critical comment on Facebook about Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner. She says the post led to officers showing up at her door.<\/p>\n

“I think this is a tremendous opportunity for us to set a precedent that puts an end to abuse of power and attack on civil liberties of residents by both the mayor and law enforcement,” Pacheco said.<\/p>\n

In her lawsuit, Pacheco claims the mayor, police chief and other city leaders targeted her for a negative Facebook comment in which she claimed the mayor called for the death of Palestinians.<\/p>\n

She believes her post was singled out and prompted the police response. Mayor Steven Meiner<\/a> previously stated he sent the comment to the Chief, which he commonly does with what he deems hate speech at the request of the Chief.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Pacheco documented the encounter and shared it on Facebook, including video of officers asking whether the account belonged to her.<\/p>\n

Responding to the lawsuit, Meiner said the filing contains inaccuracies and suggested the statements at issue could be defamatory.<\/p>\n

“We will defend the right for every person of every background to live freely here in Miami Beach and certainly for our Jewish community,” Meiner said.<\/p>\n

Pacheco said her lawsuit is aimed at preventing similar incidents from happening to others.<\/p>\n

“I want to make sure that this doesn’t continue, this isn’t a pattern, and that other people, other residents don’t fall victim to this,” she said.<\/p>\n

Miami Beach <\/a>Police Chief Wayne Jones addressed the incident during a February city meeting, saying he stood by the department’s actions and would not handle the situation differently.<\/p>\n

“We have an obligation to react to that,” Jones said at the Feb. 5 meeting. “The goal and intent of the investigators in responding to Miss Pacheco’s house was not to take away her free speech, but to quite frankly have a frank conversation with her.”<\/p>\n

CBS News Miami reached out to Jones for comment on the lawsuit but had not received a response as of publication.<\/p>\n

In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Miami Beach woman has filed a federal lawsuit against the city, its mayor and police chief, claiming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[502,123,1642,125,124],"class_list":["post-203380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-community","tag-miami","tag-miami-beach","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}