DENVER—For the second time in less than three weeks, Denver’s Citizen Oversight Board is disagreeing with discipline that city Safety Manager Ron Perea gave to a police officer.
Perea, who became safety manager this year, met with the city’s Independent Monitor Richard Rosenthal and the Citizen Oversight Board on Friday to discuss discipline for officer Eric Sellers. Earlier this year, Perea suspended Sellers for 45 days without pay for using “inappropriate force” in 2008 and “commission of a deceptive act.”
Sellers was found to have lied to internal investigators about a case, which is cause for firing under a new police discipline system the city began using in October 2008.
The Citizen Oversight Board unanimously disagreed with Perea’s decision not to fire Sellers.
Roxane White, chief of staff to Mayor John Hickenlooper, told The Denver Post late Friday that Perea was “seriously reconsidering” his decision.
Perea also met Friday with the city attorney’s office to review his discipline of Sellers.
Latino and African-American leaders this week criticized Perea in another case involving a video of an officer throwing a man to the ground in April 2009. Perea disciplined officers for filing an inaccurate report about it but kept them on the force. The Citizen Oversight Board also deplored that decision.
The FBI is now looking at the 2009 case at the mayor’s request, and the police department said Thursday it had reopened its internal investigation in the case after receiving undisclosed new information.
Sellers was disciplined because of a complaint filed by 23-year-old Jared Lunn of Commerce City. He told three officers in Lower Downtown in the early hours of Nov. 23, 2008, he wanted to press charges against a stranger who had pushed a pizza out of his hands onto a sidewalk and then punched him before running away.
He said Sellers told him to go home.
Lunn said he walked away, telling the officer over his shoulder, “Way to protect and serve.” He said the officer then put him in a choke hold, got on top of him and handcuffed his hands behind his back. Lunn was released and was never charged with a crime.
Though the new discipline system says lying to internal affairs investigators is grounds for presumptive termination, Perea granted mitigation to Sellers partly because he believed it took too long for previous Safety Manager Al LaCabe to decide how to punish Sellers. Perea has declined to publicly discuss his decision because Sellers is appealing his punishment on grounds that it is excessive.
Hickenlooper said Perea has the right experience for the job.
“But it takes a while to communicate effectively around decisions, and maybe to figure out how to approach that decisionmaking,” Hickenlooper said.
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Information from: The Denver Post,
