Denver Safety Manager Ron Perea’s refusal to fire a police officer in yet another controversial abuse case could seriously undermine a new discipline system it took the city six years to put in place, critics said Friday.

For the second time in less than three weeks, Perea clashed sharply with Independent Monitor Richard Rosenthal and the Citizen Oversight Board, this time over an officer found to have lied about the use of excessive force.

Perea, under fire in a separate, highly publicized case in which he issued light discipline in a police beating caught on video, met in a closed-door session with the board and Rosenthal on Friday to defend his decision to give Officer Eric Sellers a suspension of 45 days without pay for “inappropriate force” and “commission of a deceptive act.”

The board unanimously decided to issue a report disagreeing with Perea’s discipline of Sellers. The board never publicly criticized the decisions of former Safety Manager Al LaCabe during the seven years he held the post.

Roxane White, chief of staff to Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, said late Friday, “Ron is seriously reconsidering his decision.”

In addition to meeting with the Citizen Oversight Board, Perea also met Friday with the city attorney’s office to review his discipline of Sellers.

“The purpose was to meet with him and review the order from a legal perspective, and to analyze his decision under the terms of the new disciplinary matrix and new discipline handbook,” said City Attorney David Fine. He added that he believes Perea has the power to reverse his decision in the Sellers case, something city officials expect him to do soon.

“It’s the Wild West”

The push to fire Sellers was applauded by the man who filed the complaint in the case, Jared Lunn, 23, of Commerce City, a volunteer firefighter in Brighton.

He said Sellers put him in a choke hold, handcuffed him and treated him to a profanity-laden tirade after he criticized the officer for failing to press charges against someone who punched Lunn and knocked a pizza out of Lunn’s hands on a Lower Downtown street on Nov. 23, 2008.

“Denver police, to me, are basically criminals with badges,” Lunn said. “I have no respect for them. I somewhat fear them because it’s Wild West out there for them.”

Under a new police discipline system the city began using in October 2008, lying to internal affairs investigators, as Sellers was found to have done about his confrontation with Lunn, is a cause for “presumptive termination.”

Many police departments consider such lying a fireable offense because it calls into question the ability for the officer to be believed when he testifies in court.

LaCabe spent years crafting a new discipline system to replace one that required officials to use past discipline decisions to determine punishments.

Under the new system, specific violations lead to specific presumptive punishments. Lying under oath is among the most serious of offenses in the new system. Such lying is included in a category of “egregious misconduct substantially contrary to the standards of conduct reasonably expected of one whose sworn duty is to uphold the law.”

Despite the new discipline system, Perea decided to grant mitigation to Sellers, in part, because he believed it took too long for LaCabe to decide how to punish Sellers. Perea inherited the case when he became safety manager this year and assumed oversight of the city’s police, sheriff and fire departments.

Perea has declined to publicly discuss his discipline of Sellers because Sellers has appealed his decision to a civil service hearing officer.

Sellers did not return telephone messages seeking comment. In court documents, he has argued that Perea’s discipline, which includes a provision that Sellers will be fired if another similar violation occurs, was excessive.

The Citizen Oversight Board and Rosenthal fear Perea’s decision in the case could allow union officials to use the timeliness of discipline decisions as leverage in future appeals.

“His rationale made no sense to us at all,” oversight board member Cathy Reynolds, a former Denver councilwoman, said of the Sellers case. “There are several things we’re concerned about, like there just being a slap on the wrist for lying. It’s the coverup that gets us.”

The board earlier this week deplored Perea’s decision to keep two officers on the force accused of covering up the beating of a man outside a LoDo nightclub, images of which were captured on video. The Police Department on Thursday reopened an internal investigation into that case, saying new witnesses had come forward.

Time to adjust

Following a push by Latinos on Thursday for Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper to fire Perea, the mayor at a Friday news conference emphasized police reforms his administration has pushed. He said his administration had overhauled police hiring and training standards. He noted that police cameras installed during his watch amounted to a reform, as did the hiring of Rosenthal.

“I think Ron Perea is in a new job that he has never done before,” the mayor said. “But if you look at his narrative, his life and his resume, I think he has the right experience. But it takes a while to communicate effectively around decisions, and maybe to figure out how to approach that decisionmaking.”

Lunn said that during the early-morning hours, he was celebrating a friend’s birthday in the LoDo area. He said he got a pizza from Two Fisted Mario’s Pizza along Market Street when a stranger pushed the pizza out of his hands onto the sidewalk and punched Lunn.

Lunn said that when he saw three police officers pulling up in a squad car, he told them he wanted to press charges against the attacker, who had run off.

He said Sellers instead told him to go home. Lunn said he got no sympathy when he pointed out that he also wore a uniform as a firefighter. Instead, he recalled, Sellers responded with obscenities.

Lunn said he walked away, telling the officer over his shoulder, “Way to protect and serve.”

The officer then grabbed him and put him “in a choke hold until I was about to go limp, and then got on top of me and wrenched my hands behind my back and handcuffed them,” Lunn said. “I couldn’t use my thumbs for a week.”

Lunn said he was so frightened, he responded by repeatedly answering, “Yes, sir. No, sir.”

Lunn said that after the officer released him, one of the other officers told Lunn’s friend, Chris Fuchs, 22, “This guy does this all the time. . . . We don’t know how he gets away with it.” Lunn was never charged with a crime.

Fuchs, who said he witnessed the incident, confirmed his friend’s account.

“They told him that he just got (expletive)-up by the toughest police officers in Denver,” Fuchs said.

The guidelines

The policy statement on the cover of the Denver Police Department Discipline Handbook, established in 2008:

“An effective discipline system is one that is fair, rational, efficient and consistent, reflects the values of the Department, protects the rights of officers and citizens, promotes respect and trust within the Department and with the community and results in a culture of public accountability, individual responsibility and maintenance of the highest standards of professionalism.”