Two Miami Dade Police Sergeants Receive United States Attorney General’s Award

Miami, Florida – Immediately, throughout a ceremony at Miami-Dade Police Division (MDPD) headquarters in Doral, Florida, MDPD Sergeants Kurt Berardino and Christopher Perez had been offered with the Fifth Annual United States Lawyer Basic’s Award for Distinguished Service in Neighborhood Policing.

The Lawyer Basic’s Award acknowledges particular person state, native, Tribal, and territorial cops, deputies, and troopers for distinctive efforts in group policing.

The Division of Justice introduced the award recipients in March, which included 18 regulation enforcement officers and deputies from 12 jurisdictions throughout the nation.

Throughout in the present day’s ceremony, First Assistant United States Lawyer for the Southern District of Florida Michelle Alvarez offered Sergeants Berardino and Perez with their awards, which included a letter to every officer from United States Lawyer Basic Merrick B. Garland.  Miami Dade Police Division Interim Director George A. Perez attended the ceremony and publicly acknowledged the Sergeants for his or her distinctive work.   

Sergeants Berardino and Perez had been honored for his or her tenacious legal investigation of a July 2020 capturing in Miami that left one little one useless and one other little one and two adults injured.  A ShotSpotter alert confirmed that 21 pictures had been fired on a Miami avenue.  The investigation revealed that the victims had been returning dwelling from procuring and had been fired on as they had been getting out of their automobile.  Detectives Kurt Berardino and Christopher Perez (now each sergeants) immersed themselves within the subsequent investigation, poring over a number of Crime Stoppers ideas, reviewing hours of surveillance footage, and questioning potential witnesses. As Berardino and Perez developed the case, they established a rapport with two of the survivors, and people survivors offered a constructive identification of the topics concerned within the capturing.  This constructive identification was key in furthering different leads that had been gathered.  Proof collected was essential in solidifying sufferer statements and the timeline of the occasions.  Arrest warrants had been finally issued, and in September 2020, the detectives traveled to Georgia, the place one suspect was taken into custody and later confessed; a second suspect was additionally arrested.  It was the tenacity, persistence, and willpower of Detectives Berardino and Perez that closed this case and introduced justice to the households of the victims and to the group.

The Division of Justice works carefully with nationwide regulation enforcement stakeholder teams through the award assessment interval, making the most of their experience and expertise to find out the recipients in a aggressive nomination course of.  The Division additionally works carefully with its elements, using the breadth of information inside the Division to make sure a profitable program that honors the distinctive service of our nation’s regulation enforcement officers and deputies.  This 12 months, the Division obtained 185 nominations from 145 companies, recognizing a complete of 347 particular person officers, deputies, and troopers.  There have been 39 states represented within the nomination pool, overlaying state, native, campus, sheriff, and different company sorts.

Full data on the Fifth Annual Lawyer Basic’s Award for Distinguished Service in Neighborhood Policing might be discovered at https://www.justice.gov/ag/policing-award.

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