‘A strong foundation’: Mario Knapp vows to restore policing, tackle corruption as Miami-Dade Sheriff

After a 27-year career with the Miami-Dade Police Department that saw him lead many units and operations, Mario Knapp says he's well-suited to the returning county Sheriff job. Image via Mario Knapp.

As Mario Knapp sees it, the greatest indicator of future performance is past performance, and few candidates running for Miami-Dade Sheriff this year have law enforcement records that can compete with his.

He hasn’t raised as much money as a few others in the 17-person contest. He also hasn’t landed headline-grabbing endorsements some others have that can supercharge a bid for public office.

But as far as know-how, levelheadedness and vision are concerned? Knapp, a Republican, said he’s at the top of the ticket.

“I’m in a strong position in this race,” he told Florida Politics.

“I have the background that supports it. You can’t manufacture 27 years of operational experience at the most high-reliability units in a police department only a few months before the election, though it seems many others are doing that.”

Now one year into running for Sheriff, a job returning to Miami-Dade through a statewide referendum nearly 60 years after voters abolished the office, Knapp is optimistic about its impact on the county despite local efforts to stymie a transfer of policing powers.

He said that while the return of an elected Sheriff’s Office necessarily requires a separation of sorts from the Mayor’s Office and County Commission, the three share a common goal: improving services for Miami-Dade residents.

“We may not agree on everything,” he said. “But I plan to stay in my lane. And my responsibility — my main priority — is to make sure we provide safety and security to the residents.”

To that end, Knapp shared a four-pronged plan he believes will set the Sheriff’s Office up to succeed and, in turn, better protect and serve Miamians while also improving government accountability.

“A Coca-Cola can floating in the Pacific Ocean”

First on the list, he said, is restructuring what is now the Miami-Dade Police Department (MDPD) to prioritize public safety — a no-brainer, one might say, but something Knapp argues isn’t focused on enough today.

Uniform patrol is deficient and not properly structured, he said. Call times are “horrendous” because there aren’t enough cops available. Reports in the past year about problems with 911 in local cities and a troubling thread on the neighborhood-based social media platform, Nextdoor, support that claim.

Knapp said there’s been an 18% increase in early retirements at the MDPD in large part because police officers don’t feel support from command staff, elected officials and the community.

“This trajectory is unsustainable in our industry. It directly impacts every single family because when police no longer feel supported, they’re no longer in a hurry to get to your house to answer your call, and that’s a huge public safety issue,” he said.

“We need to fix that by giving the command staff and rank-and-file a vision for this Department. Right now, this Department is a Coca-Cola can floating in the Pacific Ocean with no direction, no rudder, no forward momentum.”

Second, Knapp wants to bring the public into the fold by opening the Sheriff’s Office doors and making it more transparent and communicative. That means informing residents about how the Department functions, what protocols it has in place and just being better about getting word out about important safety issues in a preventative rather than reactive manner.

“We need to do that before the catastrophe, not after. The public will be much more tolerant of our actions if they understand the considerations we have while making decisions,” he said. “They may not agree 100%, but they’ll understand how we decide things. And we’ve historically been horrible about that.”

The last two prongs of Knapp’s plan target private and public unscrupulousness.

As Sheriff, he said he would harness the powers of the office as much as is legally possible to crack down on the “rampant” condo and homeowners association fraud in the county.

He’s already met with lawmakers like Doral Sen. Ana Maria Rodriguez and Miami Rep. Juan Porras, who both passed related legislation, to discuss the issue and propose a bill that would empower Sheriffs to enforce state regulations, audit associations and investigate fraud complaints.

Knapp said he would establish a permanent section within the Sheriff’s Office to address HOA and condo fraud, and he’d staff it with full-time, specialized detectives who would focus solely on the issue.

“We cannot continue to wait for a state agency (the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation) to handle the problem here,” he said. “Our residents are being abused, bullied and are losing their houses due to these corrupt associations, and they’re doing it blatantly.”

The last piece of Knapp’s plan is popular among Sheriff candidates: establishing a public corruption unit to investigate potentially crooked elected officials.

“If there is an allegation that someone is corrupt — a county government employee, politician, Commissioner; it doesn’t matter — then there needs to be an independent vehicle ready to investigate,” he said.

“Everyone is tired of these politicians whose names we’ve known for the last 20, 30 years, and they’re in and out of the circuit from city to city, and yet there’s all kinds of allegations against them and no one to investigate. Miami-Dade residents deserve to know there’s a unit willing and able to do that and let the cards fall where they are.”

In the past two years, a multitude of current and former elected officials in Miami-Dade have come under investigation for allegedly misusing their public power for personal gain. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez faces state and federal probes into alleged pay-to-play schemes. Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo in June lost a $63.5 million lawsuit over his harassment of business owners in his district.

Gov. Ron DeSantis removed former Miami Commissioner Alex Díaz de la Portilla from office after his arrest on a host of corruption charges. Another former Miami Commissioner, Sabina Covo, is under investigation for bribery.

Former Miami-Dade School Board member Lubby Navarro is facing charges of stealing $100,000 from her district. Ex-Miami-Dade Commissioner Joe Martinez, a former police officer and an early favorite for the Sheriff job, is going to trial this year to defend himself against felony charges of unlawfully accepted compensation. DeSantis suspended him in September 2022. Martinez, a Republican, officially entered the Sheriff’s race Thursday.

Last year, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava confirmed there was a corruption investigation into drug smuggling in the county prison system. Questions of potential impropriety have also been raised about overseas trips Levine Cava has taken in her official capacity as Mayor that her Campaign Manager took at the same time.

Knapp’s cop brother, Willy, is the subject of an internal investigation into whether MDPD officers unjustly failed to arrest him following a roadway crash where on-site witnesses said he was drunk. Knapp denied knowing about the incident until “a year after it happened” and said the case “has nothing to do” with him, adding, “My brother is his own person.”

There are more examples. And according to COE Executive Director Jose Arrojo, a public corruption unit would be a boon to his agency’s efforts to hold officials accountable.

“I would welcome the establishment of a Public Corruption Unit in the Sheriff’s Office dedicated to addressing malfeasance by elected officials,” he told Florida Politics by email. “Also, in my opinion, and based on my experience as a prosecutor and ethics compliance officer, I would think that local, state, and federal inspectors general, auditors, law enforcement agencies, and prosecutors would also be supportive of the proposal.”

“Building a foundation”

Knapp began his career with the MDPD in October 1994 at age 20 and held many leadership roles over the next 27 years. He served as commander of the Crime Suppression Unit, Training Bureau and Seaport Operations Bureau and several district stations He led MDPD’s Office of Communications, SWAT team, Bomb Squad, Special Events Section and the Marine Patrol, Canine, Motor and Divers units.

He also was the Department’s use-of-force subject matter expert for training and policy writing, which included testifying for or against officer in use-of-force cases, and chaired the committee that formulated MDPD’s active shooter protocols after the January 2015 terrorist attack at the office of Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

In August 2021, Knapp retired from the force after leading search-and-rescue efforts in the aftermath of the condo collapse in Surfside. He said it had nothing to do with the “very taxing” duty of overseeing post-disaster operations at the site. Instead, he got a job from Wrap Technologies, a manufacturer of “less lethal devices headquartered in Tempe, Arizona.

He spent a year with the company before leaving to begin preparation for a run at the Sheriff’s job.

“It was always in my sights,” he said.

He filed to run on Jan. 1, 2023, the same day as Barrow.

By then, three others — Republican Miami Police officer Ruamen DelaRua, retired Democratic MDPD Lt. Rickey Mitchell and then-MDPD Director Freddy Ramirez, then the highest-ranking member of the force — were already running.

Knapp called Ramirez “one of the most genuine people (he’s) ever met” and said the two had a good relationship. Ramirez was the first person he called upon filing.

“It was just to let him know that I was running for the position and that we weren’t going to be at odds with each other,” he said. “I see this as a very open and public job interview, and like a Fortune 500 company, there were two Vice Presidents putting in for a job. And each should do their best at getting it. I made that clear to him.”

That isn’t to say Knapp didn’t have reservations about Ramirez’s candidacy, which he intimated was being steered by Levine Cava’s campaign. Ramirez, in his appointed position as Police Director, worked at the best of — and answered to — Levine Cava, who with the County Commission tried unsuccessfully to keep many of the powers that will be transferred from her office to the Sheriff next year.

Knapp said Ramirez went as far as changing his political affiliation from Republican to Democrat to better appeal to Levine Cava’s voter base.

“The reason we’re going back to a Sheriff is because of the political influence associated with being supervised by a politician, by the Mayor in the case,” he said.

“In my view, his changing to a Democrat was (due to) political pressure from the boss. If the Sheriff is going to be under that level of influence or continue to be, that is not the right position for Miami-Dade. This is the first time we’ve done this in 60 years, and I continue to say that this is not the time for political experiments, especially when we’re going to be building a foundation for the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office. It needs to be a strong foundation.”

Ramirez withdrew from the Sheriff’s race in September, two months after a suicide attempt at a Florida Sheriffs Association conference in Tampa. In November, he returned to the Department as a senior adviser.

So far, Ramirez has refrained from endorsing anyone, including Levine Cava’s preferred candidate James Reyes, a Democrat and longtime Broward County Sheriff’s Office administrator whom she promoted to Chief of Public Safety in November after Ramirez’s attempted suicide.

She endorsed Reyes in February — a move Barrow derided as “disrespectful to voters” and indicative of “machine-style politics” under her administration.

Levine Cava’s predecessor in the Mayor’s Office, Republican U.S. Rep. Carlos Giménez, endorsed one of Knapp’s Primary opponents, MDPD Assistant Director Rosie Cordero-Stutz, who also carries an endorsement from Donald Trump.

Knapp, meanwhile, overwhelmingly won an endorsement in March from the Hispanic Police Officers Association. He’s also raised the fourth-most money in the race, behind Reyes, Mitchell and Republican Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Joe Sanchez.

Miami-Dade hasn’t had an elected Sheriff since 1966, when voters there eliminated the position after a grand jury report revealed rampant corruption within the Department. The county instead has a Police Director, who is appointed by and reports to the Mayor and their Chief of Public Safety.

In 2018, however, 58% of Miami-Dade voters joined a statewide supermajority in approving a constitutional amendment requiring all 67 counties in Florida to have an elected Sheriff, Tax Collector, Property Appraiser and Clerk of Courts by early 2025.

The 2024 Primary Election is Aug. 20, followed by the General Election on Nov. 5.