Rookie Officer Ramon Perez was fired from his position as an officer with the Austin Police Department for being “so impaired by his moral convictions that he is incapable of taking in and processing information – especially that which may be in conflict with his already-held beliefs. Perez is “defensive” and not able to take in “feedback” from supervisors, she wrote.”
Wow. So, what happened to cause this guy to get fired? Well, it seems that he refused to Taser an old and frail man for fear that it could send the man into cardiac arrest.
On Jan. 15, Perez responded to a domestic-violence call where he met a woman who said her husband had pushed her down and hurt her arms. While interviewing the woman outside her home, Perez said her husband came outside, keys and coffee in hand, and headed to his car in an attempt to leave. Perez told him to stop, he said, but before he could direct the man further, his backup, senior police Officer Robert Paranich “lunged” at the man from behind, causing the man to lose his balance. “I considered that an escalation of force,” Perez said, and not a controlled way to get the man under control with the least amount of force possible – as is required by APD policy. While the man struggled to regain his balance, Perez said Paranich ordered him to use his Taser on the man; Perez refused because the man wasn’t resisting arrest, and Perez was sure the man could be placed under arrest with lesser force. Additionally, Perez said, the man appeared to be in poor health and a likely candidate for a heart attack – two additional factors APD’s Taser policy asks officers to consider before using the weapon.
In the end, Perez and Paranich were able to get the man on the ground and in cuffs with no more force than soft-hand control, Perez said – a fact that proves the Taser was not needed: “If more force were necessary, then we wouldn’t be able to take him down,” he said at a press conference. “That means I did the constitutionally correct thing” and followed APD policy.
Not only did he follow Austin Police Department policy, he did the constitutionally correct thing. Uh oh… He was then transferred to night-shift and was again brought forth to his superiors for assessment after another soft-hand tactic.
Just two months later – shortly after Perez again questioned his supervisors, Lt. Daniel Zahara and Sgt. Jesse Brown, in this case about their apparent disapproval of his handling of a high-risk car stop in connection with APD Gang Suppression Unit detectives – Perez said Brown ordered him to report to APD psychologist Carol Logan for a meeting designed to help facilitate “better communication” between Perez and Brown. Perez said he was told the session with Logan would be spent practicing “word games” – a fact he said Logan confirmed – but that in fact, unbeknown to Perez, the meeting was intended as a fit-for-duty review, the outcome of which could bolster the supervisors’ desire to terminate Perez.
Officially, the reason they terminated the officer was based upon his job performance, yet the report from the APD psychologist was based almost entirely upon his religious and moral beliefs.
Indeed, Logan’s four-page report mentions nothing about word games and instead focuses almost entirely on Perez’s moral and religious beliefs, which Logan concludes are so strong they are an “impairment” to his ability to be a police officer.
