After abrupt retirement news, will outgoing Miami-Dade police chief run for office?

Outgoing Miami-Dade police director Juan Perez said Monday he’s been approached about running for county mayor in 2020 and is not ruling out a campaign, including a bid for county commission.

“People have talked to me about it,” Perez said Monday of the race to succeed his current term-limited boss, Mayor Carlos Gimenez. “I haven’t decided if it does interest me.”

Asked about the possibility of running for an open seat on the county commission next year, Perez said: “I’m not there yet.”

Then he expanded on the appeal of holding that position. “To me, a natural progression would be something like the commission first, rather than jump right into a mayor-type run,” said Perez, who lives in District 8, a South Dade seat being vacated by mayoral candidate Daniella Levine Cava. “Commissioner would be a step where you could see how the government really runs.”

The 51-year-old announced a Jan. 12 retirement date in late December, weeks after his department came under scrutiny for a Dec. 5 police chase that ended in four deaths. The pursuit ended in Broward County with extensive gunfire from officers at two armed gunmen who hijacked a UPS truck after a jewelry store robbery in Coral Gables.

Four people died: the gunmen, UPS driver, and the driver of a car who happened to be near the Miramar intersection where the chase ended and the shootout began. Estimates on the number of shots fired by officers range from 100 to 200. The FBI is handling the investigation, including whether police acted appropriately in firing their weapons.

Perez said his retirement news, revealed in a Twitter post on a Friday afternoon on Dec. 20, had no link to fallout from the Miramar shooting. He was enrolled in Florida’s deferred-retirement program, which allows government employees to accumulate up to five years of pension payments in exchange for agreeing to retire on a certain date. For Perez, that date was in June, but his announcement moved up the police director’s exit to Jan. 12.

On Monday, Perez said nobody at Miami-Dade asked him to leave his post, and that the UPS incident had nothing to do with his retirement timing. “It was a personal decision I made with my family, my wife. ... We’ve been talking about this for a long time,” he said. “One has no connection with the other.”

A frequent media presence, Perez has been police director under Gimenez since 2016. He grabbed the spotlight even before the mayor named him to the top job, urging police cadets to fight a Gimenez budget proposal that included cuts for the agency. “Be loud! Be vocal!” Perez told the graduating trainees in a videotaped ceremony that became public. Gimenez ended up dropping the proposed cutbacks.

Holding elected office could give Perez, a Cuban-American Republican, a springboard for running for Miami-Dade sheriff in 2024, when the county plans to hold a state-mandated election for the office being reinstated through a constitutional amendment approved in 2018. Gimenez, a former fire chief, has also expressed interest in the job.

Should he run for mayor, Perez would be the second county police director to seek the office. Carlos Alvarez was elected in 2004 and reelected in 2008, before being ousted in a historic recall in 2011. Gimenez won the special election to replace him.

Mike Hernández, a former Gimenez communications director, said he thought Perez — who often goes by “J.P.” — proved himself a skilled politician during his four years as the most high profile of the county’s department heads. “J.P. was probably the most politically astute police director in Miami-Dade history,” said Hernández, now a political consultant with the Mercury public affairs firm. “Whether or not police directors want to admit it, while they’re administrative professionals, they’re also politicians.”

Perez declined to reveal his plans for 2020, except to say leaving in January “frees me up for some other opportunities.”

“I’m not going to sit around the house, and mow my lawn,” he said.

This story was originally published December 31, 2019 at 6:00 AM.