Audio By Carbonatix
MAURICIO RODRIQUEZ celebrated his 20th birthday a few days after Christmas 1990 by hot-wiring a late-model Chevy pickup. He and two friends then careened through the streets of west Phoenix in the stolen vehicle.
²Along the way, the Phoenix man slowed long enough for his pals to hop out, then resumed his mad rush to nowhere. It didn’t take Phoenix police long to track the speeding Chevy. A police chopper followed overhead as Rodriquez zigged and zagged west on Van Buren, then veered north onto 43rd Avenue.
It was just past midnight and the streets were slick from a steady drizzle. At 43rd Avenue and McDowell, Rodriquez plowed into 52-year-old Guadalupe Estrella’s station wagon. The collision knocked out four of her teeth, and she suffered leg and shoulder injuries. Rodriquez escaped serious injury and fled on foot.
Phoenix cop Joe Perez had tailed Rodriquez for several blocks. As Perez neared the crash site, his brakes locked and his car slid into the Chevy pickup. One of Perez’s first thoughts was that his accident could mean a few days off without pay. He wasn’t injured, but he was mad as hell when he jumped out of his patrol car and gave chase on foot.
In short order, Perez and several other Phoenix cops found Mauricio Rodriquez hiding inside a nearby car wash. Some of what ensued is disputed, some is not. Perez’s version of his role in the unfortunate events has been confirmed by those who observed him:
He says he aimed his gun at Rodriquez and ordered the suspect to get on his knees with his hands over his head. Perez reholstered the weapon after it appeared Rodriquez wasn’t armed.
By all accounts except Rodriquez’s, the suspect didn’t obey Perez’s commands. No one can say what would have happened if Rodriquez had done as he’d been told. But he didn’t, and what did occur in the next seconds would have lasting consequences for several of those involvedÏespecially Joe Perez.
Still irate about his car accident, Perez marched up to the standing Rodriquez and hit him-three or four times,” Perez says-in the back with both fists. Perez also kicked Rodriquez-probably twice”-in the back and buttocks. You made me wreck my car, you son of a bitch,” Rodriquez recalls the cop told him. Another officer pulled Perez away from Rodriquez, who still hadn’t surrendered.
Rodriquez, corroborated by Phoenix police officer Patricia Boyd, who watched from a few yards away, insists that several other cops pounded on him in the moments that followed. When it was over, Rodriquez had suffered a fractured left wrist, a swollen right wrist, a bloody mouth and nose, and abrasions to his back.
Rodriquez attributed his broken wrist to one of the cops who handcuffed him. Police investigators, however, speculated that Rodriquez’s wrist could have been injured during the high-speed car crash that preceded the melee.
Rodriquez suspected his bloody nose started after the officers who finally arrested him pushed him face down on the concrete. And the abrasions? Again, no one could say for sure. What is certain is that all the officers but Joe Perez later denied any wrongdoing.
Despite the uncertainty over how Rodriquez sustained his injuries, there is no doubt about whom police and prosecutors have blamed for almost everything that went wrong that night: Joe Perez.
Perez admits he deserved to be punished by the Phoenix Police Department. But the 30-year-old Perez never expected it to cost him the only career he’s ever really wanted. And he never figured to become the first cop in anyone’s memory to be prosecuted in Maricopa County for police brutality. His jury trial on a charge of felony aggravated assault is set to start May 20. He could be sentenced to almost two years in prison if convicted.
I’m a good cop who screwed up,” Perez tells New Times. I’m not a criminal. The guy wouldn’t do what I told him to do, and I lost my cool.”
Several factors have conspired to leave Perez accused of a felony, his previously stellar career in tatters.
One is that it was more palatable for Perez’s supervising sergeant to focus on PerezÏthe only cop who had owned up to wrongdoing-than to investigate his entire squad.
That’s especially true because Sergeant Douglas Hardin had been at the scene that night. Questions naturally would have been raised about why Hardin had apparently done little to stop Perez and his other officers from overreacting.
It also didn’t help that Perez lost his cool a few months before Los Angeles cops pummeled motorist Rodney King. The savage beating of King-vividly captured on videotape-put law enforcement everywhere on the defensive. Phoenix police and county prosecutors certainly didn’t want to give the appearance of going soft on one of their own.
²Another key was Perez’s ill-fated decision to break the police officer’s time-honored code of silence. It’s quite possible, say several cops familiar with the case, that if Perez had simply taken his punishment, he could have saved his job and avoided criminal charges. Instead, he fingered other alleged wrongdoers-including his sergeant-with dire results.
Joe Perez has become a pariah to the Phoenix Police Department and to the union to whom he paid dues during two and a half years on the force. Known as PLEA, the union routinely picks up attorney’s fees for members who appeal their department-imposed discipline to the city’s Civil Service Board.
But in a controversial move last year, a PLEA committee voted not to do so for Perez. That meant Perez-who’s strapped for money-was forced this March to appeal his firing without a lawyer to a board hearing officer.
Unlike Rodney King’s beating, this instance of police brutality has drawn little media attention-mostly inaccurate. One local station wrongly reported that Perez had pummeled a handcuffed prisoner.”
The Perez case isn’t a King scenario in another way. Hispanic, black and white officers were involved in the arrest of a Hispanic man. And the Hispanic Perez is being assisted in his appeal by a black man, Ron Cherry, a vice president of the NAACP’s local and state chapters. Joe was a young, dumb cop who didn’t know how to play the game,” says Cherry, a recently retired Phoenix cop. He told the truth and got nailed for it. He did go over the line, but some punishment would have done the trick. This wasn’t Rodney King or anything close to it, though the county attorney wants to make it seem like that. Perez was salvageable.”
The severity with which the Phoenix Police Department and county prosecutors have treated Joe Perez may appear to signal a new, get-tough approach to its own in the wake of Rodney King’s bludgeoning by Los Angeles policeÏtheir innocent verdict notwithstanding. In recent years, however, some rank-and-file Phoenix cops point out, there have been egregious instances of misbehavior by fellow officers still in uniform:
One cop in 1990 hit a juvenile twice in the back with a closed fist, after the boy raised his hands in surrender. That cop was suspended for one day. Another cop that year belted a handcuffed man in the face. Three days off.
Last year, the Phoenix Police Department did fire Craig Scott, the stepson of chief Dennis Garrett, after sustaining citizen complaints that he had hit a handcuffed suspect with his nightstick and fists. (In January, the Civil Service Board reinstated Scott and reduced his punishment to a one-month suspension.)
But the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office didn’t ask a grand jury to indict Scott or any of the other officers against whom the Phoenix Police Department has upheld complaints of excessive or unnecessary force since 1985.
And if you believe Phoenix police officer Patricia Boyd-an eyewitness to the Rodriquez incident-what happened that rainy December night was not an aberration.
I’ll tell you,” Boyd told Phoenix police investigators last year, what happened in that car wash unfortunately is something that we are all aware goes on every night all over the state. The adrenaline gets pumping. It was nothing any different. Unfortunately for Joe, he got caught that night.”
JOE PEREZ SOUNDS like many of those people he used to arrest, spinning conspiracy theories that attribute his demise to unseen sinister forces.
Perez acknowledges again and again that he used excessive force” on Rodriquez. It’s not like I shot him or beat him with a stick or anything,” he tells New Times. I wasn’t pulling no Rodney King. But I shouldn’t have done what I did, not ever.”
He’s talked about that stupid night” until he’s blue in the face. Now, he’s just blue, facing possible personal bankruptcy, foreclosure on his Peoria home and a felony conviction.
I wish I would have kept my mouth shut,” Perez says in a deceptively placid manner. His dark, brooding eyes dart everywhere around the living room of his tidy tract home, resting for a moment on a family portrait taken during happier days. I wish I had just taken my punishment and gotten on with my career.”
Perez’s wife of 12 years, Cynthia, listens nearby with a worried look on her face. These have been the worst of times.
Her husband has been wound tightly for a long, long time, so tightly he spent a week at Camelback Hospital in February for stress-related depression.
Perez’s fateful skirmish with Mauricio Rodriquez and its aftermath have eaten him alive. He carries on for hours about his case, rehashing what happened before, during and after he punched and kicked Rodriquez.
He spends his days lifting weights and preparing for his upcoming criminal trial: His existence would be wretched, Perez says, if not for his family. Even then, he says, It’s all too much sometimes. I didn’t expect it to turn out like this.”
Until December 28, 1990, Joe Perez would have seemed an unlikely candidate for what has befallen him. His life story until that night was one of inspiration, not desperation. The son of Cuban immigrants, Perez grew up in a poor Tampa neighborhood. He joined the Air Force at the age of 19, earning an honorable discharge after a stint at west Phoenix’s Luke Air Force Base. He later earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration.
Perez and his wife Cynthia decided to settle in the Valley with their two young children, as he chased his dream of becoming a cop. The Phoenix Police Department hired Perez in July 1988, and he did well from the outset. His performance ratings until his clash with Mauricio Rodriquez were uniformly average or above average.
Officer Perez has a positive attitude and constantly attempts to improve his job knowledge,” his job review of May 1990 concluded.
Even after the Rodriquez incident, Perez scored well with his bosses. Joe is willing to help others and strives to improve his job knowledge,” a supervisor wrote in May 1991.
There were no allegations of excessive force in Perez’s personnel file before his run-in with Mauricio Rodriquez. His lone black mark before Rodriquez was a time in May 1989 he drove his patrol car over a large rock while on a stakeout.
MAURICIO RODRIQUEZ sounds like a glib, streetwise attorney as he details his own criminal history. I’ve met a lot of good officers who stand on that scale of blind justice and treat you square,” he says, tapping a table with his comb. Same with judges. It’s a matter of perspective. But I’ll tell you, man. Ever since that thing with those Phoenix cops, I don’t know anymore. It was real weird.”
Rodriquez says this in an interview room at the Maricopa County Jail. A native of Mexico, Rodriquez grew up in South Phoenix, where he attended South Mountain High School. From an early age, he got into trouble constantly. He’s an artist of sorts, and does precise renderings of people, animals and butterflies.
Now 21, Rodriquez can’t seem to stay out of trouble. His record shows 30 arrests and numerous convictions, the majority of them for drinking-related misdemeanors.
County prosecutors revoked Rodriquez’s latest probation term February 26 and had him jailed after police nabbed him with a small amount of marijuana. I’ll get it together one of these days,” he says, shrugging slightly. I’m still young.”
The events of December 28, 1990, gave Rodriquez the rare opportunity to turn from multifelony suspect to crime victim in the space of a few minutes. He smiles at the idea of it.
After they beat my ass,” he says, I told them, `Take me to jail, where it’s safe.’ I never wanted to go to jail as bad as I did this time.”
The story Rodriquez tells New Times differs in some respects from the numerous interviews he’s given police. But he’s steadfast about a critical point: He says more than one cop beat him that night.
I been in a lot of gang things and I know what it’s like when more than one person beats on you,” Rodriquez says. They grabbed my hair, kicked me, punched me. They kept coming in.”
In an odd way, Mauricio Rodriquez and Joe Perez have become allies: They agree that police and prosecutors have singled out Perez for punishment. And they agree that Sergeant Doug Hardin observed much of what happened that night, but decided to focus only on Perez.
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ONE BRUTAL NIGHT IN WEST PHOENIX WHEN IT… v5-13-92
