In January, Joyce Perez let Greeley police officers into her house. She’s regretted it every day since.
Officers responded to two calls from the home on Jan. 25 on a report of an intoxicated man and found her son, Joseph Perez, in the basement, stabbing himself in the stomach, according to police reports. When he advanced at officers with the knife, one shot him. Her son’s alive and in jail, slowly working his way through the court system. He’s recovering well from the wounds, but the shooting left her afraid and unwilling to trust anyone now. She avoids going out in public and won’t let anyone into her house she doesn’t already know.
In the four months after Perez was shot, police in the Greeley area shot another three people — killing two. Two police shootings in May made nine officer-involved shootings in two years.
Almost everyone, from residents to citizen advocacy groups to the police themselves, seem worried by the numbers.
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