Former police chief served on ethics panel
Moment of silence observed for Michael Loffredo.
Michael Francis Loffredo, a former Jupiter Island police chief and a member of the Palm Beach County Commission on Ethics since 2014, has died at 77, the commission said Tuesday.
The announcement said Loffredo, who lived in suburban Lake Worth, died Friday evening “surrounded by his wife and children.” It did not provide the cause of death.
At Tuesday morning’s meeting of the Palm Beach County Commission meeting, Commissioner Dave Kerner asked for a moment of silence in part to honor Loffredo.
Loffredo had joined the panel in March 2014 after the Palm Beach County Association of Chiefs of Police selected him to replace Dan Galo, who had resigned in December 2013.
The Chiefs of Police will submit a new appointment who must meet certain qualifications but whose selection does not need to be ratified by the ethics panel.
Members of the ethics panel are unpaid and are appointed by various entities under rules established when the commission was founded in 2010. They also sit as the committee of the Palm Beach County Inspector General.
Loffredo served three years as a military policeman and later remained in the reserves for 25 years, retiring from the Criminal Investigation Command as a chief warrant officer. After leaving active military duty in 1961, he was a Florida Highway Patrol trooper for seven years before becoming the fourth investigator ever hired by the newly founded Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
For the next 30 years, he was a special agent and supervisor in various offices, ending as special agent in charge at the West Palm Beach office.
Loffredo earned a Ph.D. in criminal justice education from Union University in 1985. He was chief of the Jupiter Island Police Department from 1998 to 2005 and later was an adjunct faculty member at Lynn University, South University and Keiser University.
He is survived by his wife, Karen; sons, Michael and Joseph; daughters. Catherine Angione and Lisa Copeland; and four grandchildren. Services are set for 11 a.m. June 13 at Bethesda-bythe-Sea Episcopal Church in Palm Beach, followed by interment at South Florida National Cemetery west of Lantana.