Nothing in Ron Perea’s background suggested he would fail in Denver.
The 54-year-old was a decorated U.S. Secret Service agent and an Albuquerque police sergeant. His own ethnic background seemed to position him to immediately understand and develop rapport with Denver’s large Latino community.
Two months ago, Perea left his prestigious Secret Service job as special agent in charge of the Los Angeles division for the job of Denver’s safety manager overseeing the city’s police, sheriff and fire departments.
“I really love Colorado,” Perea said of his decision to leave Los Angeles.
His wife, Brenda, planted a new garden at their house in Aurora when Perea was the special agent in charge of the Denver field division from 2007 to mid-2009, and she didn’t want to leave.
His daughter, Danielle, 26, is married, lives in Boston and works for a publishing company. His son Ron is an officer with the Boulder Police Department.
Perea grew up in the Five Points neighborhood of Albuquerque with an older brother and a younger sister. He remains close to both of them.
“It was pretty low socioeconomic area, but we didn’t know it,” Perea said in an interview last week. His humble roots and Latino background made it all the more uncomfortable for him to have Denver Latinos questioning his fairness.
“It’s concerning just to hear the community having these issues, not one segment over another,” he said.
Perea attended the University of Albuquerque for his bachelor’s degree in criminology. He then became an Albuquerque policeman and worked patrol for two years before moving up to a sergeant in the booking area of the jail.
Perea didn’t surround himself with police officers while he was on the force. He preferred socializing with the blue-collar workers he went to school with.
Run-ins with discrimination
He recalled incidents of discrimination in his life — times when people made assumptions about him based on how he looked.
When he was a federal agent assigned in Tyler, Texas, Perea said he was often mistaken for a laborer despite a suit and tie.
When he lived in Maryland, Perea’s neighbor saw him mowing the lawn outside.
“He asked me in broken Spanish how much I charge to mow lawns,” Perea said.
In 1984, he earned a master’s degree in public administration from the University of New Mexico.
While Perea was working in Albuquerque on a counterfeiting case with federal agents from the U.S. Secret Service, he decided he wanted the job.
As a federal agent, Perea traveled the world and experienced a life he did not expect considering where he came from.
Perea said he didn’t fly in an airplane until he was in his 20s.
“I just kind of felt I could do it,” Perea said of moving up in his career. “I just didn’t look at that from stopping me from anything.”
Perea was an agent from 1984 through 2009. In his career, he supervised other agents, guarded Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, presidential candidates John Edwards and Jesse Jackson, and former South African President Nelson Mandela along with other foreign dignitaries who visited the U.S.
Perea knew the history of community mistrust of Denver police when he took the safety manager job but says he didn’t know the “specifics” surrounding the high-profile shootings of Frank Lobato and Paul Childs, past deadly police actions that had inflamed the community.
Councilman Michael Hancock was on one of two hiring panels that recommended Perea go forward in the hiring process for Denver safety manager.
“He was one of the top three candidates recommended by the panel,” Hancock said.
Seventy people applied for the job.
“He came and made an impression,” Hancock said. “If I remember correctly, he flew in on his own dime and time to do the interview process. He was impressive and very steady. He seemed to understand what the role of manager of safety called for, and he had done his homework.”
Rising level of concern
But since then, Hancock and other panelists expressed concern with Perea’s decisionmaking, especially with regard to a disciplinary matrix for police officers established under former Manager of Safety Al LaCabe.
“As we look at this, there are two huge threats — loss of trust by the public with regard to police relationships and the damage done by not honoring the process that people have invested in — and we can’t stand for that,” Hancock said.
Art Way of the Colorado Progressive Coalition, another panelist who recommended Perea, said he expected something different.
“I believed him at his word when he said transparency and accountability were what he was planning on bringing to the job,” Way said. “I felt that with him coming from the Secret Service and being involved with federal work, I thought that would . . . make him another good ol’ boy and follow along with the code of silence of police officers and the long history of protecting each other.”
But Way said Perea convinced him otherwise, and Way decided to allow Perea to go forward in the hiring process.
“I thought he would be willing to step outside of that to bring about accountability,” Way said.
A month before LaCabe left the city, he took Perea under his wing and explained there were tensions in the city over the conduct of some of the city’s police officers.
“I am truly concerned there are people in the community who have feelings I would undermine what he was doing,” Perea said before his resignation. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Felisa Cardona: 303-954-1219 or fcardona@denverpost.com
