Miami Beach cop avoids jail, gets probation for South Beach beating. He’ll keep pension

A Miami Beach police sergeant who took part in the beating of a handcuffed man in South Beach took a plea deal on Thursday, agreeing to give up his cop credentials and serve six months of probation.

Under the plea deal, Sgt. Jose Perez won’t serve any jail time. Prosecutors dropped the battery charge down from a felony to a misdemeanor — and the conviction won’t appear on his record.

Perez was the first of five Miami Beach police officers to conclude his case for the July 26, 2021, beating that was captured on video surveillance and garnered headlines across the country. The plea deal means Perez won’t be a convicted felon and lose his pension earned from decades of police and military service, defense attorney Jonathan Noah Schwartz said.

The 52-year-old cop will now retire. “He will move forward with his life in a productive manner,” Schwartz said.

Perez was one of five Miami Beach police officers arrested and charged with attacking two men in the lobby of the Royal Palm Hotel in South Beach in July 2021.

The incident took place during Rolling Loud hip-hop festival weekend, when thousands of out-of-town visitors descended onto South Beach. That weekend, the police department rolled out a new city ordinance that officers used to controversially arrest a slew of mostly Black visitors who were filming cops.

The officers had been arresting Dalonta Crudup, who had been illegally parked on a motor scooter on 13th Street and Ocean Court. Police say Crudup took off, hitting an officer with his scooter and injuring him severely enough that he wound up hospitalized and on crutches.

Crudup ditched the scooter and ran into the lobby of the Royal Palm, where surveillance cameras captured the group of officers pummeling him even as he was handcuffed. Another man who happened to be in the lobby, Khalid Vaughn, 28, was video recording the arrest and was promptly tackled and punched and elbowed by officers.

Perez was seen on video kicking Crudup at least three times.

Crudup, who was visiting from Maryland, was arrested and charged with aggravated battery on a law-enforcement officer. The charges were later downgraded, and he is still awaiting trial on charges of fleeing police and reckless driving.

Another tourist, Vaughn, from New York, was also arrested after he began video recording the arrest as he walked through the lobby. Prosecutors later dropped all the charges against Vaughn.

Perez was initially charged with misdemeanor battery, along with officers Kevin Perez, Robert Sabater, Steven Serrano and David Rivas. Jose Perez and Kevin Perez, along with officer Steven Serrano, later had their charges upgraded to felonies.

Miami-Dade prosecutor Josh Novak told Circuit Judge Alberto Milian that Crudup knows of the plea deal. “This has victim approval,” Novak said.

Perez will also have to give a sworn statement to prosecutors about what happened that night, plus complete 25 hours of community service and an anger management class.

The plea deal was struck after a Miami-Dade judge sentenced another ex-cop, former Miami-Dade police officer Alejandro Giraldo, to 364 days in jail for battering a woman who’d been the victim of a gun crime. The State Attorney’s Office, in recent years, has charged several cops for rough arrests, although prosecutors have lost several high-profile cases.