Major Mario Knapp (Ret.) is a 27-year veteran of the Miami-Dade Police Department. His last official assignment was to MDPD’s Special Patrol Bureau, where he oversaw the Tactical Operations Section (Special Response Team, Dignitary Protection Unit, Bomb Squad, K-9 unit, Incident Management Team, Rapid Deployment Force) the Special Events and Planning Section (Aviation Unit, Marine Patrol Unit, Motors Unit, Underwater Recovery Unit), and the Police Operations Section(General Investigations Unit, Uniform Patrol, Transit Unit). This bureau is not only responsible for specialized support throughout the entire County of Miami-Dade, but also conducts on-site threat assessments, planning and mitigation of all large-scale events within the same.

Knapp served as Acting Chief of the Public Information and Education Bureau, Media Relations Section and Community Affairs Section. He also served as Captain of the Warrants Bureau, which is responsible for the apprehension of wanted subjects, travels nationally for all criminal extraditions, and works with the US Marshal Task Force. Additionally, he served as Captain for the Kendall and Northside Districts, where he coordinated all police functions including patrol, Investigations, all crime suppression and neighborhood resource initiatives. 

While assigned to the Miami-Dade Police Training Bureau, he supervised and oversaw all in-service and advanced departmental training matters including tactical and force-related training programs and policy within the department, and acted as the departmental use of force expert, and Taser Expert for Miami-Dade County. Knapp headed the department’s TASER CEW, Defensive Tactics and Firearms programs, and is a certified instructor in multiple subjects. In the rank of Lieutenant, Knapp was the platoon commander of the Robbery Intervention Detail, the department’s biggest violent crime suppression initiative for 5 years. Previous to that, he was a Lieutenant assigned to the Port of Miami. Knapp also served as a Sergeant in the Tactical Narcotics Team (TNT) and was a full-time member of the department’s Special Response Team (SRT) while being an officer. Before SRT, he was assigned to the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Unit, one of the department’s early Community Oriented Policing (COPS) initiatives. 

Major Knapp has been reviewing and updating departmental use of force policies and training practices since the rank of Sergeant in 2004. He independently organized and chaired the department’s Mass Casualty Attack (MCA) Committee, which was responsible for drafting MDPD’s response policy and training for mass casualty attacks (active shooters) for all departmental personnel and the department’s newly developed Priority Response Team (PRT).