HPOU presented its Investigator of the Month honor to Sergeant Jeremy Medina in its May general membership meeting.
Medina is a valuable member of the FBI Safe Streets Task Force, which has investigated violent gang crimes since April 2017. In that two-year period, Sergeant Medina has made a significant impact in reducing the gang crimes in southeast Houston.
In early November last year, a high school student was gunned down and murdered in broad daylight. The event received extensive public attention and placed the community in a heightened state of anxiety. The community and its leaders demanded answers.
Due to the high-profile nature of this particular incident, Sergeant Medina—then Officer Medina—independently started asking his informants to see if he could gain any intelligence about the shooting.
Fortunately, one of his reliable informants confided in him, and advised him of the suspect’s identity. The informant provided Medina with a means to get in contact with the suspect. Additionally, the informant stated that the suspect stated that he was going to kill another rival gang member in the very near future.
Sergeant Medina immediately contacted the Criminal Intelligence Division (CID) and completed the necessary paperwork to locate the suspect using advanced, sophisticated technological means.
As a result, the suspect was located in Southwest Houston. Sergeant Medina and other officers set up stationary and rolling surveillance.
Once the suspect and his counterpart were spotted, the decision was made to arrest the suspects by conducting a traffic stop. During these intense moments of contemplating how to pull off such an arrest, the informant advised Medina that another individual, also wanted for several outstanding felony warrants, was also present in the area.
All suspects departed the immediate area in different directions. Through a coordinated effort, a total of three suspects were simultaneously taken into custody without incident. At one scene, a traffic stop was conducted, two individuals were arrested, both were found to possess handguns.
The guns were tested, the results submitted to the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN). The results showed that one of the recovered handguns matched the gun used in the controversial November murder and was also linked to the ballistics in four other murders, three other aggravated assaults and three other aggravated robberies.
It should also be noted that none of this would have been possible without the assistance from the South Central CST, Southeast CST, Gang Division, Criminal Intelligence Division and the Major Offenders Division.
“For this reason,” HPOU’s Sgt. Luis Menendez-Sierra pointed out, “Sergeant Medina should be recognized for his great investigative skills and proactive thinking in possibly preventing another murder on the streets of Houston, and assisting in solving a highly publicized homicide.”