{"id":2878,"date":"2025-10-14T17:37:24","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T17:37:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/2878\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T17:37:24","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T17:37:24","slug":"ex-hialeah-police-chief-walks-out-of-miami-dade-jail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/2878\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Hialeah police chief walks out of Miami-Dade jail"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text text--small text--normal text--primary\">Published:\u00a0June 4, 2025 at 12:27 AM<\/p>\n<p class=\"text text--small text--normal text--primary\">Updated:\u00a0June 4, 2025 at 10:04 AM<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">HIALEAH, Fla.  \u2014 Sergio Velazquez, the Hialeah police chief from 2012 to 2021, walked out of jail Tuesday after <a href=\"https:\/\/www.local10.com\/news\/local\/2025\/06\/03\/ex-hialeah-police-chief-accused-of-stealing-money-from-agency-posts-bond\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.local10.com\/news\/local\/2025\/06\/03\/ex-hialeah-police-chief-accused-of-stealing-money-from-agency-posts-bond\/\">prosecutors accused him of stealing city funds to cover lavish personal expenses<\/a> including shopping for Rolex, Cartier, Louis Vuitton, and Versace. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.local10.com\/espanol\/2025\/06\/03\/ex-jefe-de-policia-de-hialeah-acusado-de-robar-dinero-de-la-agencia-paga-fianza\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.local10.com\/espanol\/2025\/06\/03\/ex-jefe-de-policia-de-hialeah-acusado-de-robar-dinero-de-la-agencia-paga-fianza\/\">Leer en espa\u00f1ol<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Attorney Rick Diaz represented Velazquez, 61, when he appeared before Miami-Dade County Circuit Judge Mindy Glazer Tuesday in bond court. Before corrections released him, he had to prove that the source of his $30,000 bond was not criminal. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Records show prosecutors accused Velazquez of stealing over $635,000 out of the $2.6 million that vanished while he allegedly exploited the city\u2019s narcotics investigations and forfeiture funds.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Velazquez faced charges of organized fraud, money laundering, and first-degree grand theft. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Velazquez was not present for Wednesday\u2019s hearing, however, his attorneys appeared via Zoom and entered a written plea of not guilty on his behalf.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Glazer set an Aug. 21 sounding date and scheduled the trial to begin Sept. 8. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-article-body__copyright\">Copyright 2025 by WPLG Local10.com &#8211; All rights reserved.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" alt=\"Christian De La Rosa\" class=\"c-image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/https:\/\/author-service-images-sandbox-us-east-1.publishing.aws.arc.pub\/wplginc\/59a14089-8518-45b5-b7.jpeg\"  width=\"100\" height=\"100\"\/>Christian De La Rosa<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-author-bio__author-description\">Christian De La Rosa joined Local 10 News in April 2017 after spending time as a reporter and anchor in Atlanta, San Diego, Orlando and Panama City Beach.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" alt=\"Ryan Mackey\" class=\"c-image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/https:\/\/author-service-images-sandbox-us-east-1.publishing.aws.arc.pub\/wplginc\/8725e99c-e445-48a0-bd.jpeg\"  width=\"100\" height=\"100\"\/>Ryan Mackey <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-author-bio__author-description\">Ryan Mackey is a Digital Journalist at WPLG. He was born on Long Island, New York, and has lived in Sunrise, Florida since 1994.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published:\u00a0June 4, 2025 at 12:27 AM Updated:\u00a0June 4, 2025 at 10:04 AM HIALEAH, Fla. \u2014 Sergio Velazquez, the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2879,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[225,227,226],"class_list":{"0":"post-2878","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hialeah","8":"tag-hialeah","9":"tag-hialeah-headlines","10":"tag-hialeah-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}