Guest Opinion | Police Chief John Perez: The Challenges of Policing

As a 35-year City employee with the police department, I would like to share my view of today’s policing challenges in our communities.  I understand the struggles of poverty and ethnicity, as well as the historical resistance to change in the policing profession. 

 I have experienced the personal emotions of losing family members to gang violence and equally I am familiar with the emotions as a police officer to arriving at more than one incident where a young man was dying from gunshots sustained from gang violence.  

The horrific murder of not only Mr. George Floyd but others like Ms. Breonna Taylor sparked global anger, protest, and violence and it has progressed to peace marches and vigils to decry police brutality, racism, economic and social inequalities.  

We should all be outraged, but the real question is what will we do — together? 

 I cannot answer for what is going on around the country, but I realize I am accountable to this community and how we police.  

For many, like myself, I haven’t waited for change, I have initiated action my entire adult life, and like others before me, we have made reforms from inside the police department while partnering with our community.  Half of our top leadership are women and 30 percent are African-American, with other diversity ratios higher than most police departments in this country.  We are proud of our workforce.  

I realize this is not enough and more is needed. We need to better connect all officers with our community so they have familiarization with one another and a connection point that will last for decades.

I have served as your Chief of Police since 2018.  I am responsible for our policing culture and ensuring our first priority is prevention, followed by intervention, and, when required, enforcement to stop crime and arrest those responsible for the 10,000 annual crimes that occur in our town. 

 I must ensure we pursue justice for victims so peace can follow. We must earn community trust and confidence in how we do our job with care, compassion, and understanding.

This is not always a simple goal to achieve. We released video of an officer involved shooting in which an individual fired gunshots directly at officers from within his vehicle.  

It is a difficult task to reduce serious crime such as the dozen incidents of recent violence, including the gang murder of a young man in broad daylight.

And we seized 170 guns off the streets this year.  These events all occurred while attempting to strike a perfect balance with prevention strategies to reduce the need for policing services. 

We must not ignore our own history:  We reduced most violent and serious (Part I) crimes by nearly 70 percent over 30 years but at what cost? The pitfalls of socioeconomic issues have continued with faulty educational systems, over incarceration, and increasing the level of fear of the police in some neighborhoods? We must address the emotional trauma it produced with enforcement strategies and terms like “Northwest” or asking young people if they are on probation or parole. 

 As a young officer in the 1980’s, I witnessed the rate of violence in Pasadena and the devastation of the 1992 riots in Los Angeles and in Pasadena.  

After the civil unrest, I served as a Community Relations Officer and I participated in the public forums focused on changing policing practices through new community policing initiatives.  This effort continued through the 1990s and early 2000s until 9/11 struck our nation, once again changing how we policed. 

The recent community bill of rights is an example of the needed effort to work together as these requests need more discussion and understanding with many of these points already in place. 

 We all want our City to be the shining light on the hill for others to follow as we develop changes that will last a lifetime.  

The bill of rights properly references the Special Enforcement Section.  However, SES was eliminated in February of 2020 through our restructuring efforts.  The request to cut the police budget is also understandable but problematic as there would be a need to layoff many of our diverse and younger officers who were recently hired from our community.  There is also fear that the product of these cuts would create another large exodus of officers, which would result in difficulty in recruitment and retention.  As Chief, my own efforts include the refusal to increase the police budget by millions of dollars with more police officers and civilian staff to patrol our 30 parks.  In cooperation with the police association and others, we collaborated in a science approach to using body-worn camera video to improve performance.  We combined this effort with an immersive training and accountability approach to reduce the use of force by 50 percent over two years with a larger reduction in specific techniques.

We established new models of policing with consideration of the new realities of today’s challenges.  We developed a Chief’s Advisory Council of well-respected community members, representing most organizations pursuing police reform.  We also established a new team of personnel to manage the large percentage of our 120,000 annual calls for service involving homeless crime issues, violence, chronic living conditions, and encampments. Many of these calls derive from non-profit service providers, businesses, and residents asking for our help in our attempt to not criminalize homelessness.  We also developed “Policing 101” which is recognized as a best practice in transparency as well as our community conversation sessions, introducing our newest officers to the community.  The monthly police chief’s report helps keep our community and our council aware of updates on use of force, public complaints, and community efforts.

I worry many of those efforts may be at risk as we prepare for additional enhancements in crime prevention efforts and grant funding to local non-profits.  In the coming weeks, there will be discussion on recommendations for oversight, led by our Mayor, Councilmember/chair of the public safety committee, and one of the best City Manager’s in government today.  I, along with the police association, would support a community oversight commission but I would strongly suggest only one such body to avoid conflicting objectives and responsibilities.  

Moving forward, we have one goal: To be the change we want to see and ensure this effort is completed together as one community.  We will need to support one another and have real dialogue about the change that should last for decades and not just for the season.  As your Chief, I am committed to that journey and our collective effort as a community.