Opa-locka officer arrested again — this time for dragging bound teen down steps
Sergio Perez, a troubled Opa-locka cop who was reassigned last year after his arrest for using a Taser on a fellow officer, was arrested again Tuesday afternoon.
This time, Perez turned himself in to law enforcement for an incident two years ago in which he was captured on cellphone video dragging a mentally ill teen — whose hands and feet were already bound — down a flight of concrete steps. He’s been charged with a single count of misdemeanor battery.
The Miami Herald reported in July that state investigators were looking into possible criminal charges against Perez and fellow officer Nikeya Jenkins over the incident.
Attorney Rick Diaz said his client turned himself in to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement headquarters near Doral, with a promise to appear in court. The attorney also blasted the charge, saying the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office is “doubling down” because Perez refused to plead guilty to a Taser incident in which he was arrested earlier in the year.
“Typical, they know when they’re losing,” he said.
The FDLE said Perez intentionally struck Castro several times in the head, despite the protests of another officer on the scene. And FDLE said, as Perez dragged Castro down the steps, his head bounced off the concrete.
Perez and Jenkins were cleared of any wrongdoing internally by the police department in the case involving Jafet Castro, who is now 21. Castro, who has a lengthy history of mental health issues, was bound with cables by family members who called for police help prior to the 2020 incident. But when police arrived, Castro’s father and another family member claimed they told officers they no longer required police assistance, but were ignored.
As friends and family are heard shrieking and begging the police officers to stop dragging Castro on the cellphone video, an officer can be heard saying, “It’s just electricity. It looks bad. ... it hurts for a second, but he keeps resisting, you understand?”
The two officers were named along with the city of Opa-locka in a federal civil lawsuit filed earlier this year by Castro. The nine-count complaint not only accuses the officers of entering the home illegally, but of false imprisonment and brutality for their handling Castro when he was taken into custody. He was initially charged with resisting arrest without violence. The charge was quickly dropped.
Castro’s attorney, Michael Pizzi, said the family is “thankful that finally justice is being done and that the police officer who brutally beat him [Castro] is being held accountable.”
Perez has a checkered history with Opa-locka Police.
He was fired by the department two years after a 2013 crash in which the city found he chased a vehicle the wrong way down Interstate 95, before the car he was pursuing slammed into an SUV, killing four tourists. Still, he resurfaced and was back in uniform a few years later when an arbiter ruled the city’s probe into the car chase and wrong way accident was flawed.
By September 2021, Perez was in hot water again. This time he was accused of firing a Taser police weapon equipped with what is known as a “hook-and-loop” cartridge at a colleague inside the police station. The training weapon does not have an electronic charge.
Michael Steel, an Opa-locka police captain at the time, said Perez entered Steel’s office on Sept. 1 and told the captain he was “there to certify him with the use of the new Taser 7.” Perez’s arrest report, in which he was charged with misdemeanor battery, said the captain repeatedly told him he didn’t want to be certified. Then, according to the arrest form, when Steel turned away, Perez shot him in his back.
“Stop acting like a baby, you know that didn’t hurt,” Perez allegedly told Steel. Though the gun didn’t emit an electrical charge, its hooks left two large welts on Steel’s back. After the incident, Perez was removed from the police department and sent to code enforcement.
Steel, who at one time served as interim police chief in the city, was fired unexpectedly a few weeks ago, with little explanation. Diaz, Perez’s attorney, said he believes the new arrest had to do with the attorney’s investigation into Steel, the star witness in the Taser case. Diaz said before Steel’s firing, the attorney found he lied about a previous arrest on a law-enforcement application.
In a July letter sent to U.S. Attorney Juan Antonio Gonzalez and Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, Diaz outlined how Steel has a history of “sustained misconduct,” questioned his residency in the U.S. and misrepresented his citizenship two decades ago when applying to be a Margate police officer.
“It’s clearly payback,” said Diaz.
Steel said his parents told him he was adopted at the age of two and that he later became a U.S. citizen.
This story was originally published November 8, 2022 at 2:06 PM.
