EDGEWATER, Colo. — An Edgewater police officer under scrutiny for his treatment of suspects resigned from the department after being told he would be fired, 9NEWS Investigates has learned.
Officer Paul Perez was captured on body camera video threatening and berating an auto theft suspect and holding a pistol to the back of the man’s head. This led Jefferson County prosecutors to agree to a plea deal with the man rather than risk going to trial.
It was one of several cases in which charges were altered – or dismissed outright – because of body camera footage of Perez’s actions.
His departure from the Edgewater Police Department became effective in a two sentence resignation letter, dated Oct. 24 and issued on a law office’s letterhead. At the time, Chief Eric Sonstegard provided no details about the end of Perez’s employment.
But documents obtained by 9NEWS Investigates show that Sonstegard had decided to fire Perez for violating policy, acting unprofessionally and failing to meet expectations. At the core were multiple issues – all of which the administrators were aware of on some level.
For instance, Sonstegard was aware of the incident last December in which Perez put his gun to the back of a suspect’s head and threatened to “blow [their] brains out.” It was one of three incidents that month that led Sonstegard to take away Perez’s status as a field training officer and ordered him to undergo additional training.
The background investigation done when Edgewater hired Perez remained on file in the department. It included Perez’s own disclosures about the reasons he was fired from the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office in 2019. In body camera footage from that department, Perez threatened to shoot one suspect and pulled guns on others who, in the view of commanders, did not present a threat.
When Perez applied in Edgewater after he lost the Boulder job, he made it clear that the background investigators checking into him could view the body camera footage.
There’s no evidence anyone did. Some of that footage was aired in July by 9NEWS.
Sonstegard wrote in the letter detailing the reasons that justified Perez’s firing that “additional body-worn camera footage from your previous law enforcement agency was brought forward that showed similar conduct and indicated a larger pattern of behavior than originally thought.”
Neither Perez nor Sonstegard, who submitted his resignation in August and is intending to leave the department on Dec. 20., could not be reached for comment.
Sonstegard also cited what’s known as a “3.8 letter” – a reference to one of the rules of professional conduct for criminal attorneys. The rule requires prosecutors to disclose information about witnesses that “tends to negate the guilt of the accused or mitigates the offense.”
After 9NEWS' reports about Perez’s treatment of multiple suspects, Jefferson County District Attorney Alexis King issued the 3.8 letter to suspects arrested by Perez.
Even though none of the incidents cited by Sonstegard were known long before he issued the termination letter, the totality of the behavior created a problem for the department, according to Whitney Traylor, 9NEWS legal analyst.
“Your employees, they're agents and they can create liability,” Traylor said. “Someone here could say that excessive force was foreseeable. This department knew about it. It was an issue that he had before he was even hired.”
Sonstegard did not hire Perez. The chief who did left the department in 2022.
Traylor said that chief and his administrators should have taken the time to look at the body camera footage that Perez offered to share them.
“That's not an extensive undue hardship for them to go simply look at the body worn camera footage,” Traylor said. “I think they probably should have done that.”
Perez remains a certified police officer in Colorado and is eligible to get a job at another department.