Jury selection is going slowly in the trial of 11 Miami police officers charged with planting guns, manipulating evidence, or covering up crimes by others. Essentially, the officers are accused of "shooting suspects, then planting guns and concocting evidence to cover up wrongdoing."

Jury selection began this morning. The star witnesses against the 11 are two former cops who pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with the Government in exchange for leniency in their own cases.

"The case involved the city's worst police scandal since the 1980s, when the ''Miami River Cops'' stole cocaine from drug traffickers and sold the drug themselves. More than 100 officers were arrested, fired, or disciplined in that case. ''The history of Miami has been characterized by ugly police-community relations,'' said Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida. ''There is a loss of confidence, if not outright hostility, by the minority community because of the great number of shootings of typically unarmed black young men.''

The trial is expected to last three to five months. This brings back memories of the Ramparts police scandal in Los Angeles, which resulted the overturning of more than 100 guilty verdicts. Interesting too, that Miami just got a new police chief, John Timoney, who vied against Bill Bratton for the LA police chief job's several months ago. Bratton got the job in LA, and now Timoney has been selected for Miami. Both have quite a job ahead of them in terms of rooting out the corruption and boosting officer morale. Timoney and Bratton used to work together, and Bratton was instrumental in getting Timony his last police job as chief in Philadelphia. We think the two have different styles and we'll be curious to see which city, if either, is successful at reducing the big three: police misconduct , crime and low officer morale.