Police Chief John Perez Has No Regrets

Departing Pasadena Police Chief John Perez could see the day coming.

“I knew,”  he told Pasadena Now in an interview Wednesday,  “when I took over just as the interim chief [in 2018], that every police chief, in cities that are really challenged with the poverty rate and shootings, I knew that it didn’t matter how much work we did in a matter of reforming and restructuring the police department, I absolutely knew that I would be judged by a singular incident at some point.”

While some would point to the 2017 beating and arrest of Christopher Ballew, or the controversial police shooting of Anthony McClain in 2020 as flashpoints, Perez, who will leave his position in early January,  is philosophical about his departure, which was his own decision.

“I thought that 2022 would have to be the last year, and I thought this for a number of reasons,” Perez said. “Police chiefs are trophies these days for local activists. If you get rid of the police chief, it demonstrates that some kind of change is happening. And we know that the majority of this community supports its police department by the emails I get, and  the texts, just a lot of great support, even from the Council, which has been great.”

But, Perez continued, “I knew that in 2022, I knew the officer-involved shooting was a legal shooting. There’s no doubt about it. You may not like those types of incidents. None of us do.”

Taking an aerial view, Perez offered, “Every community needs a pressure point released. And this was building so much pressure in our community. I’ve learned that you get rid of the police chief either by termination or just by retiring. It gives the opportunity for the community to rebuild itself.”

Thus his self-imposed departure.

But Perez also stresses that the built-in challenge with that, is,  “the fact that we keep [passing] off the baton to chief after chief after chief.”

Local government over the last 25 years has created itself to start over again, and not necessarily build on what it’s learned, Perez believes.

“We are not providing scientific memorandums and paperwork to say, ‘Take over from where I’ve started and take the research even farther,’ like we’re doing with cancer research and a lot of other sciences that build on the research.”

“We don’t do that in government,” he said. “We tend to start all over again. As new leaders come in, they have a new direction. But we very rarely start at what’s working well. And so that’s the frustration I have in leaving. I’d like to stay another five years, but I also realize for this community to rebuild itself, you have to have new leadership come in and take it to a new level.”

Perez also explained that he would have no role in selecting his successor.

“That’s up to the Council and the City Manager,” he said.

In a tumultuous time for the city and the nation, perhaps the most significant and visible symbol of Perez’ leadership was his department’s response to the ongoing months of demonstrations throughout the city following the May 28, 2020 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minn. at the hands of police.

Perez would likely chafe at the comparison, but, according to an independent audit report by Gerald Chaleff, when confronted with similar demonstrations in Los Angeles, “Thousands of people were arrested [by LAPD] throughout the protests without a clearly articulated plan for detentions, transportation and processing.

“As a result,” said the report,  “those arrested were detained at the scene of the arrests for hours, handcuffed on the pavement, detained in buses, and taken to remote locations, without water or the use of bathroom facilities. Additionally, because the protests occurred during the pandemic, officers and those arrested were in close proximity, not socially distant, with many without masks and thus at risk of being exposed to the COVID-19 virus.”

In Pasadena, which saw more than 80 demonstrations throughout 2020 and 2021, police arrested only five people.

As demonstrators marched week after week through Old Pasadena and beyond, taking over major streets and blocking intersections, sometimes for hours, police kept a watchful eye but at a distance, blocking off nearby intersections to allow the demonstrators safe passage.

Pasadena saw none of the violence that marked demonstrations in cities across the nation.

The Pasadena response was developed from some early handling of local incidents over the last 25 years, such as Janitors for Justice, and the Y2K experience, Perez said.

“I had these decades of being one of the operational supervisors, one of the planners of how we approach these other events,” he recalled.

Falling back on his research, Perez noted that studies done at the campus level in the 1970s, “especially out of  Madison, Wisconsin, said that there was empirical evidence that if you don’t immediately arrive at the onset of a protest or a demonstration, you could help really calm the crowds. Instead of showing up in riot gear.”

Perez shared the approach with his command staff.

“We were planning every day early in the pandemic, and we changed over a hundred different protocols in the departments,” he said. “Then we had the unfortunate event, the tragic event of George Floyd. And so that led us into these daily conversations, saying, ‘Let’s look at everything we’re doing.’”

“And so we decided not to be, but to be, there,” the chief continued. “So you wouldn’t see us, but we were there observing what was happening.”

It was tough at first, he said.

“We got calls from business owners saying, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ And they were people I’ve known for 30 years. And they were asking me, ‘What are you doing, John?’ And so what we were able to do is, we asked them, ‘Hey, give ’em some water, give ’em some pizza, and see how it goes.’”

Following the year of demonstrations, both Perez and Commander Art Chute were asked  to provide training courses for other chiefs and other planners in the region.

The two also helped the state of California, “sit down in a room with other chiefs and rewrite how we were going to be planning and approaching other types of demonstrations in the state,” said Perez.

Despite his self-imposed departure and the attached emotions, Perez can point to at least a score of new changes and improvements in the department he led for three years.

Administratively speaking, his largest single administrative accomplishment was perhaps the department’s “past-due” reorganization.

According to a police department statement on Perez’ administration, “There was a need to reorganize to adjust for the changes in law enforcement to align with the community’s priorities.  It had been several years since any such re-organization had been done.

“To address these issues,” said the statement,  “a series of meetings with community members and members of the police department were held in 2018 to determine what areas needed change or updating.  The result was a literal re-structuring of the police department and its different divisions to best serve both the community and members of the department.”

Perez’s leadership also oversaw improvements in technology and equipment for officers such as ShotSpotter technology, body-worn cameras, a mobile command center, and improved helicopter cameras.

Perez, who holds a Master’s degree in Public Administration, also initiated improved training for officers in bias-based training and immersive training to reduce the use of force.

The reorganization also did not increase the department budget, said the statement.

With regard to the use of force, Perez also instituted a 30-day review of any categorical use of force to allow officers the ability to review their actions with a member of the Defensive Tactics Team and improve techniques if necessary.

In addition, Perez brought officer-involved shooting investigations back to local department jurisdiction rather than being handled by the LA County Sheriff’s Department, “so the community was better served through the release of information and more transparency.”

In a time of difficult recruiting and retention, the statement added, the department was additionally able to recruit new officers, especially from the local communities, “and keep vacancy numbers in single digits.” This increased the Department’s diversity and increased the number of female officers employed.

But departure still brings with it the sadness of leaving friends and colleagues, Perez admitted.

“I’m going to miss the people that give me my energy. They are my battery pack. And when I walk through the community, out where we eat for lunch or where you’re walking, so many people approach us and say, ‘Thank you,’ and they connect. I’m going to miss the people. There’s just nothing more than that. The people are what make this career, this profession.”