MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – Kevin Perez’s neighbors in Miami-Dade County said they live with the fear that the convicted Peeping Tom will break into their backyards and masturbate while spying on them.
Perez is a repeat offender. Despite his criminal record and convictions, his mother and sister defended him on Thursday in the quiet southwestern Miami-Dade Kendale Lakes neighborhood.
“My son is not a criminal,” Teresa Sanchez, his mother, said in Spanish.
Neighbors said the SWAT team descended on The Woodgate Community to arrest Perez. Records show corrections booked him on Wednesday at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center.
“Me growing up here, he has been here the whole time, so it is kind of uncomfortable,” said Leonardo Del Rio, a Woodgate Community resident.
Miami-Dade corrections held Perez without bond Thursday on two probation warrant cases. His arrest record in Miami-Dade goes back to more than a decade.
Last year, Miami-Dade deputies arrested Perez on June 22 for battery on an elderly victim and on Sept. 26 for criminal mischief.
In 2020, Miami-Dade deputies arrested Perez for voyeurism, indecent exposure, and burglary of an occupied dwelling. Records show a judge ordered him to stay away from a woman.
Perez was in the woman’s backyard when he “sat in a chair that faces the kitchen rear sliding door ... exposed his sexual organ and began to masturbate while watching the victim,” a deputy wrote in his report.
The woman reported that when she saw Perez on March 5, 2020, she knocked on the glass and yelled at him, and he stopped and fled, according to the arrest report.
On Aug. 10, 2020, deputies reported responding to the same neighborhood after Perez broke into a backyard “and began masturbating while watching the victim through the window” and fled. Deputies arrested him eight days later.
In 2017, Miami-Dade deputies arrested him twice. Once for battery and the other for voyeurism and burglary of an occupied dwelling, records show. A judge ordered him to stay away from the voyeurism victim.
A surveillance camera recorded Perez breaking into a backyard and masturbating while he watched a woman who was home watching TV in the living room, according to the arrest report on July 25, 2017.
Records show Miami-Dade deputies arrested Perez on two counts of grand theft of a motor vehicle and criminal mischief in 2014, and for battery in 2013.
In 2009, Miami-Dade deputies arrested him for marijuana possession and Miami Beach police officers for disorderly intoxication and criminal mischief.
Miami-Dade court records show most cases were dropped, but there were three convictions after arrests in 2014, 2017, and 2020.
For the case in 2014, Perez was on probation until Sept. 28, 2016. For the case in 2017, a judge gave him credit for time served and the case closed in 2018.
For the case in 2020, a judge issued a split sentence of incarceration followed by probation until March 11, 2031.
Perez also has a record of repeatedly violating his probation, including two technical violations in 2016 and three last year.
Court records show there was a violation of probation affidavits filed on April 28 in the 2020 case. A probation officer reported Perez wasn’t home when he was supposed to and failed to report three times.
Perez “stated he went with his mother to Cricket to have his cell phone repaired and didn’t think it was wrong,” the probation officer wrote and reported Perez was unemployed, and did not have sex offender and substance abuse treatment in March.
According to the affidavit, the probation officer recommended that Perez be resentenced for his crimes.
Related probation record
Local 10 News Assignment Desk Editor Wilson Louis, Assignment Desk Planner Frine Gomez, and Assignment Desk Manager Kelly Davis contributed to this report.