A lieutenant with the Miami-Dade County Sheriff’s Office was arrested Friday in Palm Beach after being caught on video admitting to exchanging sexually explicit messages and meeting with someone who identified herself as a 15-year-old girl, according to footage from the vigilante group 561 Predator Catchers (561 PC).
The officer, Christopher J. Diaz, 50, of Hialeah, was confronted by members of the vigilante group outside the IPIC movie theater in Delray Beach. In the video, Diaz admits to sending a sexually explicit selfie to the person he was communicating with and claims he thought she was 18 or 19 years old, even though she identified herself as under 15.
“She said she was 15, yeah… I’m 50… I really thought she was of legal age, 18 or 19… I knew what was going on,” Diaz stated, according to the video posted by 561 PC on the Kick platform, which had reached over 43,000 views by Saturday afternoon.
According to the police report, Diaz arrived at the meeting place armed with a firearm, which he surrendered during his arrest. Furthermore, the person posing as a minor, a 24-year-old woman who participated in the simulation, reported that Diaz touched her despite her saying, “No, no, no.”
Following the arrest, Miami-Dade Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz confirmed that termination proceedings had been initiated against Diaz. “I am outraged by the arrest of one of my officers on criminal charges involving contact with someone posing as a minor,” Cordero-Stutz said in a statement. “This behavior is unacceptable and represents a serious betrayal of the oath we take and the trust our community places in us to protect our children.”
