MIAMI – A year after the shakeup at The Miami Police Department, the police chief held a promotions ceremony in downtown Miami.
Chief Manuel “Manny” Morales recognized about 40 executive staff members, lieutenants, and sergeants on Wednesday morning to the cheer of family and friends at the James L. Knight Center.
“Many of these men and women worked years to get to these positions,” Morales said.
The list included two Haitian-American veterans, Assistant Chief of Police Cherise Giordani Gause, who joined the department as a dispatcher in 1993, and Major Max Gabriel, who former Chief Rodolfo Llanes had promoted in 2019.
Major Daniel Garrido, commanders Conrad Chin-Quee and Alex Valdes, and Sgt. Stanley Paul-Noel were also among the first who Morales recognized. Congresswoman Frederica Wilson was in attendance.
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City Manager Art Noriega had Morales step in as the interim chief in October 2021 to replace former police chief Art Acevedo, whose six-month tenure resulted in a federal lawsuit against the city, Noriega, and commissioners Joe Carollo, Alex Diaz de la Portilla, and Manolo Reyes.
Noriega, a former developer who went from overseeing about 200 employees at the Miami Parking Authority to the city’s more than 4,000 in 2020, promoted Morales in February as the permanent police chief of the force of about 1,700 sworn and civilian staff.
Earlier this year, Morales, who joined the department in 1994 after serving in the U.S. Army, reinstated Deputy Chief Ronald Papier and his wife, Cmdr. Nerly Papier, after Acevedo fired them in May 2021. Last week, the commissioners’ attorneys asked a judge to dismiss Acevedo’s lawsuit.
Latest filing in former chief’s lawsuit