Rafael Lopez was born in Havana, Cuba <\/span>and came to the United States as a young child<\/span>, in 1962.<\/span> \u00a0Rafael grew up in Dade County and moved to Broward County in 1990.<\/span> \u00a0He has been <\/span>married for 34 years<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

He <\/span>is a veteran of the United States Armed Forces and was honorably discharged from the United States Marine Corps. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Rafael holds a Bachelor\u2019s Degree <\/span>in Criminal Justice <\/span>from Florida International <\/span>University. He is also a graduate of the Southern Police Institute<\/span>\u2019s<\/span>, 22<\/span>nd<\/span> Comman<\/span>d Officer\u2019s Development Program and Nova Southeastern University<\/span>\u2019s<\/span>, Institute for Criminal Justice Studies, 14<\/span>th<\/span>Executive Leadership Program. <\/span><\/p>\n

He<\/span> started his law enforcement career in 1979 with the North Miami Beach Police Department and worked there until 1<\/span>990. \u00a0H<\/span>e<\/span> was recruited by MasterCard International, as an <\/span>International Security Officer. \u00a0<\/span>H<\/span>is<\/span> region<\/span> included<\/span> the Southeast United States, South and Central America, and the Caribbean<\/span>. \u00a0He <\/span>was hired by the Cooper City Police Depa<\/span>rtment in 1994 and the department <\/span>merged with <\/span>the <\/span>B<\/span>roward County <\/span>S<\/span>heriff\u2019s <\/span>O<\/span>ffice, in 2004. \u00a0He retired, as a Lieutenant, in 2015, after 33 years of Law Enforcement service.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rafael<\/span> has <\/span>been involved<\/span> with <\/span>many professional and community orga<\/span>nizations <\/span>throughout his career: \u00a0<\/span>ASPIRA of Florida, <\/span>Broward County Diversity Advisory Council<\/span>, Broward Schools ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) Leadership Council, <\/span>Collier-Lee Honor Flight, Cuban-<\/span>Americans for a Better Florida, <\/span>Healthy Mothers, Healthy Bab<\/span>ies Coalition of Broward County, <\/span>and <\/span>is a Founding Member of <\/span>The Hispanic Vote<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rafael Lopez was born in Havana, Cuba and came to the United States as a young child, in 1962. \u00a0Rafael grew up in Dade County and moved to Broward County in 1990. \u00a0He has been married for 34 years. He is a veteran of the United States Armed Forces and was honorably discharged from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-southwest-florida-chapter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":290,"href":"\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions\/290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}