Before Police Officer Luis Moura joined Darien Police, he was an officer in the Bridgeport Police Department, where one of his actions during New Year’s Eve celebrations earned him an award for bravery.
Luis Moura
Police Officer Luis Moura takes his oath of office from Police Chief Duane Lovello in July 2015 at Darien Police Headquarters.
Moura was awarded a “Courage of Connecticut Law Enforcement Plaque” by the AFSCME Council 4 union, which represents workers in Connecticut, for having “displayed tremendous bravery” in dealing with four people firing guns as they celebrated New Year’s Eve.
Moura and another officer, David Uliano, were part of a Police Department “New Year’s Eve Shots Fired Detail” for the 2014-2015 holiday, working overnight Dec. 31 to Jan. 1. Firing guns into the air is a tradition in some places, although bullets fired up also come down, and when they hit someone, often in the head, they kill at a high rate.
According to the union’s description of the incident:
The officers observed four active shooters in the rear of a yard of a residence. This area is densely populated with clusters of multifamily units in close proximity to each other. Officers Uliano and Moura quickly confronted the armed suspects, putting their lives in imminent danger. This caused the suspects, who had the officers outnumbered and out-gunned, to retreat to within the residence.
Officers Uliano and Moura called in reinforcements and were able to surround the residence and then enter the residence and made a total of 15 arrests, including the four suspects that were actively shooting. This incident could have quickly turned into a deadly situation for the officers and the public.
Officers Uliano and Moura displayed tremendous bravery while faced with this situation and risked serious physical injury and death in confronting the active shooters in the fearless manner they did. The Bridgeport Police Union would like to nominate Officers David Uliano and Luis Moura with the Courage of Connecticut Law Enforcement Plaque.
The “Courage of Connecticut” recipients were honored at a dinner on Nov. 17 in Stratford. At Wednesday’s Darien Police Commission meeting, Police Chief Duane Lovello described Moura’s actions and discussed the award with the commissioners.
I think it speaks volumes to the character of the type of person Lou is,” Lovello said. “I’m glad that he’s here.”
Moura was hired by Darien police in the first half of 2015 and on July 22 that year was sworn in. At the time, Commission Chairman Paul Johnson said his board is “very very pleased to get another officer who’s been working with another department, who is fully trained and who can step into his job in Darien” without further training.
(When the department hired six new officers at about the same time earlier this year, two of them had previous law enforcement experience outside Connecticut, and they’re undergoing shorter training. Those two officers are expected to be patrolling Darien streets very early in 2017, about four or five months before the other four new officers.)
This isn’t the first or even the second or third time the Darien Police Commission was informed about praise for Moura. Since he was hired, the Police Department received several letters from town residents lauding Moura.