MIAMI GARDENS, FLA. (WSVN) - Miami Gardens’ top cop is speaking out about springing into action to stop a suspect.
Miami Gardens Police Chief Antonio Brooklyn was forced to tackle a suspect who attacked and ran away from him during questioning, June 16.
He was at BrandsSmart U.S.A. as part of his community outreach, when the store’s general manager got a call about a suspicious customer.
“I was in BrandSmart talking to the General Manager, and he gets a call on the radio,” Brooklyn said. “He walks away and comes back, and says, ‘Take a walk with me, I think we have a possible fraud.'”
Brooklyn brought the suspect, Alvaro Acosta, into a room to question him.
“As we’re sitting in the office, I asked if he had any other identification on him, and he says, ‘Yeah’ and stands up and hands me his wallet,” Brooklyn said. “I said, ‘Do you mind if I look in it?’ and he said, ‘Yeah,’ so I open the wallet and see another credit card, so I slide it up and said, ‘It has a different name on it.'”
That’s when, Brooklyn said, Acosta attacked him and ran away.
“He just jumps up, lunges, and, like, hit me and chop blocked me at the neck,” Brooklyn said. “I have a reputation to uphold. I can’t let this person get away because if I let him get away, I’d never hear the end of it, and once he hit the door, I came out of the door with him, and there’s patrons in front of the cash registers of BrandSmart, and I was like, you know what, just jump.”
https://twitter.com/rloweon7/status/747868276848533504
Surveillance footage showed the chief tackling Acosta to the ground, where Acosta continued to struggle to escape. Patrons in the area helped the chief bring the suspect under control.
“I’m not above police work,” Brooklyn said. “If I’m going to ask the community to call in and go above and beyond, it’s something that I have to be willing to do myself.”
Acosta is in jail now.
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