The Cross vs. The Shield
With “local” police departments falling prey to collectivist ethics, exemplary Christian officers are being forced out to make room for State-worshiping careerists.

By William Norman Grigg, Editor

From all appearances, Austin, Texas native Ramon Perez would be exactly the kind of man who could be trusted to carry a badge and a gun.

First of all, he came to the profession out of a genuine devotion to public service. Forty-one years old when he went through the academy, Perez was a sober and responsible adult who had already built a family and a career as an engineer. His physical conditioning was superb, and his leadership qualities substantial. On graduation Perez was presented with the Ernie Hinckle Humanitarian Award from his fellow cadets in recognition of his compassion, integrity, and character.

Unlike some – perhaps too many – who choose law enforcement as a career, Perez treated the profession as a literal ministry. He is an independent Fundamentalist Christian and ordained minister, who preaches in local churches and home-schools his children. So it's not surprising that Perez considered the calling of a police officer – that of wielding the sword against evil-doers in defense of the innocent – as a stewardship for which he would be accountable to God.

And in that fact resides the reason why Perez was summarily purged from the Austin Police Department: As a serious Christian, he had an allegiance to an authority higher than the State.

As a rookie police officer in Austin, Perez responded to a domestic violence call in January 2005. Arriving at the address, he was greeted by a distraught woman claiming that her elderly husband had pushed her down the stairs, injuring her arms.

While Perez interviewed the victim, the alleged assailant, an elderly man in frail health, emerged from the home carrying car keys and a cup of coffee. Perez, who had called for backup, told the man to stop. As he did the backup officer, Robert Paranich “lunged” at the elderly man, nearly knocking him off his feet.

“I considered that an escalation of force,” Perez later recalled.

With the suspect struggling to regain his balance, Paranich he yelled at Perez to use his Taser to subdue the elderly man. Commonly described as a non-lethal weapon for use in restraining violent suspects, the Taser stuns and momentarily incapacitates the subject with a 50,000-volt charge. In a growing number of cases, Taser charges have killed suspects who appeared to be in perfectly good health.

While obviously less lethal than a firearm, a Taser is clearly too dangerous to be considered genuinely non-lethal, and using it on a frail elderly man would pose a serious risk of death. To his considerable credit, Perez refused to use his Taser, chiefly because the man wasn't resisting arrest, but also because of concerns that the man was so frail the electroshock device would send him into cardiac arrest.
In making that judgment, Perez was following out the provisions contained in the Austin Police Department's Taser policy.

Perez and Paranich were able to effect an arrest using “soft-hand” tactics. When it's possible to arrest a suspect without resorting to violence, Perez later said, doing so is “the constitutionally correct thing.”

A few days after this incident, Perez received what he and his attorney Derek Howard describe as a punitive transfer to the night shift. Two months later, Perez was questioned at length about that arrest, as well as a second incident in which he appeared to display “excessive” concerns about constitutional protections for suspects.

The rookie officer, who was still in a period of professional probation, was told to report to APD psychologist Carol Logan. He was informed that he would undergo a session of “word games” to develop better communication skills with his superiors. Perez was not told that the interview would be a fit-for-duty review held to facilitate the pre-ordained decision to fire him.

According to the Austin Chronicle, Logan confirmed that Perez had been told the meeting was intended to focus on “word games.” However, her four page report mentions nothing about that exercise, focusing “entirely on Perez's moral and religious beliefs, which Logan concludes are so strong they are an `impairment' to his ability to be a police officer.”

The strength of Perez's convictions supposedly produces an “impairment” of his ability to absorb new facts, to communicate with his superiors, and to deal with “feedback.”

“Perez has a well-developed set of personal beliefs,” wrote Logan. “These seem to be based primarily on his religious beliefs and it is obvious that he has spent a lot of time reflecting upon and developing these views.” While Logan offered patronizing praise for Perez's “admirable” character and convictions, she criticized him for displaying “defensiveness” when his convictions are challenged. The firmness of Perez's moral beliefs is problematic, she concluded, because they “provide him with a rationale for explaining how his views differ with others.”

Boil down Logan's assessment in a saucepan, and here's the residue: Perez was unsuitable to serve as a police officer because his values transcend the authority of the State, and his moral convictions have immunized him from collective thinking.

A month after this assessment was delivered, Perez was given an ultimatum: He could resign from the APD and keep his peace officer's license, or be fired and lose that license, and thus be left unemployable by any other department. Perez chose the first course, while fighting with the Austin City government for a year to see the report that had led to his firing.

The incident that led to Perez's firing -- his refusal to use a Taser on an unresisting elderly suspect – revealed him to be an exemplary law enforcement officer. He was a throwback to an era when police were peace officers, rather than heavily armed enforcers of the State's decrees. He was fired for disobeying an order from a superior that was unconstitutional and illegal by the department's own standards.

The official explanation is that Perez was fired for being a “substandard cop.” Perez's attorney, Derek Howard, offers a more credible assessment: “He didn't fit in because of his religious belief system.”

“It was concluded that my [morality] justified it [the decision to disobey], when in fact it was my commitment to policy and our training at the academy and the U.S. Constitution, and not necessarily my moral, spiritual foundation, that led me to that decision,” explained Perez at a December 2006 press conference. “Being tough is a good thing. Being tough, as a cop, can save your life or someone else's. But when that toughness crosses over into civil liberties, that's where a line needs to be drawn... and for some officers, that's a gray area.”

So now Perez is out of a job, and Austin's branch of the Leviathan Force will fill his slot with someone willing to adapt to the Regime's priorities. In simple terms, this means it will find someone willing to shoot an unresisting elderly suspect, at point-blank range, with a Taser – even if doing so risks the suspect's life for no good reason.

Difficult as it is to believe that a police officer with Ramon Perez's superb credentials would be cashiered for being a committed Christian, it seems almost impossible that it would happen in Austin, Texas. Yet this is at least the second time that a Texas police department has fired a decorated police officer for the supposed offense of being too devout.

In 1998, the Arlington Police Department gave Sgt. George Daniels, a 13-year veteran of the force, a peculiar Christmas present by firing him for “insubordination.” Daniels, whose commendations included Rookie of the Year, Officer of the Year, and the Medal of Merit, refused several orders to remove a tiny Christian cross he habitually wore on his uniform collar. Roughly the size of many other personal decorations affected by other officers (which included a DARE button and even a Mexican flag), the cross was not explicitly forbidden under department policy, which only bans the display of “unapproved” insignia.

Sgt. Daniels' supervisor, Police Chief David Kunkle, insisted that the cross was uniquely unacceptable for display on a policeman's uniform because it could “offend” some non-Christians, or be taken as evidence of “bias.” That assessment, probably reveals more about Kunkle's prejudices than those of Sgt. Daniels. In any case, after two written warnings, Daniels was fired. With the help of the Rutherford Institute, Daniels mounted a legal challenge that ended in 2001 when the Supreme Court refused to review the matter.

According to George's wife Carolyn, both her husband and Ramon Perez are representative of a whole generation of police officers who are being driven from the ranks of the Thin Blue Line – casualties of a nation-wide campaign to reconfigure the values of police agencies. Individualist, principle-centered officers of that sort simply don't fit in with the new collectivist ethics being implemented through “Total Quality Management/Leadership Training.”

The purpose of that training, Carolyn commented to Pro Libertate, is to teach officers the art of “circumventing rules and constitutions” in order to carry out the policies of their supervisors. The key to advancement is not sound police work, devotion to the constitutional system, or diligent service to the community, but rather a willingness to uphold the new corporate culture uber alles. And this process – often called “community policing” or some variation of that label -- is so subtle that few officers recognize what's happening until it has been consummated.

“At first the officers, like my first husband who I think died of the extra stress, just recognize that they aren't really allowed to use their training, and the money for equipment and more help (more man-power) is usually diverted and used for many `power-point' presentations--which makes the brass look so 'good and caring to the public,” Carolyn explains. “But what is happening is that the older ones, who were trained with true policing skills, etc are being 'phased out' by the pressures...many are fed up and go on to higher paying jobs, disgusted they can' t do their jobs -- which is really what the administration is hoping for. [The older officers are replaced by] young, inexperienced officers [who] are easily 'managed' and controlled.”

This is an engineered attrition – a slow-motion purge of policemen who remain loyal to the values of the old republic. This is being done to make room for a generation of officers whose chief preoccupation is career advancement, and whose supreme loyalty is to the State.

William Norman Grigg, Editor