by
William Norman Grigg

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Regina
Tasca is a “rogue cop” –
and God bless her for it. 

Tasca is in
the middle of disciplinary hearings that may result in her termination
from the Bogota, New Jersey Police Department. She stands accused
of “bizarre and outlandish” behavior in two incidents
a year ago during which she revealed herself to be “A danger
to other police officers.” 

Her first supposed
offense – which wasn’t mentioned until after the second – was a
failure to assist another officer who was “attacked” by
a drunken woman who was roughly half his weight and barely five
feet tall. Her second was was to intervene when a police officer
from another jurisdiction viciously assaulted an emotionally troubled
young man who was not suspected of a crime.

“I consider
myself a peace officer,” Tasca told Pro Libertate. “My
thing is to help make sure that people are safe, and that they don’t
have a reason to fear the police – that we treat them like human
beings. The incident that started all of this was one in which I
intervened to prevent excessive force against a kid who was the
subject of a medical call, not a criminal suspect.”

On April 29,
2011, Tasca was on patrol when she got a call for medical assistance.
Former Bogota Council Member Tara Sharp, concerned about the erratic
behavior of her 22-year-old son Kyle, called the police to take
him to the hospital for a psychological evaluation. Requesting police
intervention, particularly in cases of this kind, is never a good
idea. Sharp was exceptionally fortunate that Officer Tasca was the
first to respond: She has years of experience as an EMT and had
just completed specialized training on situations involving psychologically
disturbed people.

Once on the
scene, Tasca acted quickly to calm down the distraught young man. 

“When
the call came, I heard that a couple of officers from Ridgefield
Park were coming to provide backup, which I thought was OK, Tasca
related to Pro Libertate. “Kyle had been shouting and swearing
when I got there, but I got him calmed down.” The young man’s
mood changed abruptly when he saw the other officers arrive.

“He noticed
them and asked me, `Why is there another police officer here from
another town?’ Then he said that he was leaving, and he moved maybe
two or three steps when one of the Ridgefield officers jumped him.”

Sgt. Chris
Thibault tackled Kyle, wrapped him in a bear hug, and attempted
to handcuff him. Within an instant, Sgt. Joe Rella piled on and
began to slug Kyle in the head while his horrified mother screamed
at the officers to stop.

Tasca instinctively
did what any legitimate peace officer would do: She intervened
to protect the victim, pulling Rella off the helpless and battered
young man. Eventually the Ridgefield officers handcuffed Kyle –
then turned their fury on Tasca.

“One of
them yelled at me, `We can’t have this!’” she recalled. “I
said, we `can’t have’ what? There was no reason to take that
kid to the ground and start slugging him. This was a medical assistance
call, and the mother was sitting their screaming at them to stop
beating on their son. I didn’t fail to aid another officer; I acted
to stop a beatdown.”

Two days later,
Tasca was summoned by her captain, who informed her that she was
being suspended pending a disciplinary hearing. She learned that
in addition to “using force” to stop Rella’s assault on
Kyle Sharp, Tasca was accused of failing to assist Bogota Officer
Jerome Fowler when he was “assaulted” by an intoxicated
woman on April 3.

“Nobody
had said anything to me about the earlier case until after the incident
with the Ridgefield officers,” Tasca pointed out to me. 

Tasca was on
night patrol when she came across “this young girl walking
in the middle of the street, crying, with one broken heel. She was
very drunk, and the officer who had picked her up had just dropped
her off at the apartment of somebody who was described as a `male
friend’ – but practically nothing was known about this guy. He just
left her there without finding out anything about the situation
at that apartment; she could have been assaulted, raped, or killed.
Whoever it was, he just threw her back out on the street – which
actually might have been the best outcome. So she was crying hysterically
and very distraught when I found her. I radioed HQ that I would
be assisting her, and the officer who had picked her up arrived,
and we went to the hospital with me carrying her in the back seat
of my police car.”

The young woman
was taken to the Emergency Room at Holy Name Medical Center.

“Once
we got there, our job was done,” Tasca continues. “I stuck
around for a little while to make sure everything was OK. There
were about a half-dozen hospital security personnel on the scene,
as well as about four or five EMTs and nurses there. The girl walked
over to the nurse’s station, then decided that she didn’t want to
go to the hospital. When Jay [Officer Fowler] reached for her, she
started flailing her arms, and hit his hand, opening up an old cut
he had on one of his knuckles.”

This was the
“assault” that figures so prominently in the charges against
Tasca. The officers who ganged up on Kyle Sharp have not been charged
or subjected to administrative discipline – but Tasca’s refusal
to help ground and pound a tiny, intoxicated woman who had made
incidental contact with a fellow officer is being treated as a career-imperiling
delinquency.

“Apparently,
Jay believed I should have pushed all these people aside and help
him subdue a tiny girl – she was about five foot one, and very skinny
– who had given him a scratch,” Tasca pointed out.

After being
put on suspension, Tasca was subjected to a psychological evaluation
by Dr. Matthew Geller, a psychiatrist who does contact work for
New Jersey law enforcement agencies. Geller provided the diagnosis
he had been paid for, ruling that Tasca was unfit for duty. At the
same time, the Bogota PD’s internal affairs officer produced a report
concluding that Tasca’s refusal to assist Officer Fowler in the
April 3 incident demonstrated her unfitness. 

The internal
affairs review wasn’t exactly a model of investigative rigor, Tasca
observes: “There were nearly a dozen other people who witnessed
the incident – and the only one he interviewed was a 14-year-old
Ambulance Corps volunteer who happened to be his niece!”

Tasca, an openly
gay female police officer, believes that at least some of the problems
she’s experienced are the product of a cultural clash with what
she describes as “the Old Boys Club.” More importantly,
however, she has been targeted for the unforgiveable offense of
“crossing the Blue Line” by taking the side of a Mundane
being attacked by a member of the Brotherhood. 

“I’ve
been an officer here in Bogata for eleven years, and spent seven
or eight years as a Class 2 Special Officer in Fairview, which is
where I grew up,” Tasca told Pro Libertate. “Until now,
I’ve never had problems with anybody on the force, or anybody in
the community. Oh, sure, when you work near people for ten or twelve
hours every day, you’ll have disagreements and maybe say some things
you shouldn’t, but that’s typical of just about any relationship,
professional or otherwise. But never in my career had I been accused
of unfitness for duty until after that incident a year ago. 

As a veteran
with nearly twenty years in law enforcement, Tasca has noticed a
dramatic change in the institutional culture of law enforcement
in recent years.

“I think
what we’re seeing is a lot of kids who are given power and immediately
begin to abuse it,” Tasca observes. “Some of these guys
are as young as 18 years old. You give them a uniform, and it goes
right to their head. And even many of those that don’t do abusive
things miss the point, which is that we’re supposed to be peace
officers. They get a badge and a gun and they think they’re gods,
or at least that they’re entitled to treat people like dirt. I see
them as people, and insist on treating them like I’d want to be
treated.”

In contemporary
law enforcement, commitment to the Golden Rule is a firing offense.
Just
ask Ramon Perez, whose experience is strikingly similar to that
of Regina Tasca.

Perez, a probationary
officer who had won the top leadership award at his police academy,
was
cashiered by the Austin, Texas Police Department as a result of
his refusal to use a Taser on an elderly, non-violent man during
a domestic disturbance in January 2005. The order was unconstitutional,
illegal, a violation of the guidelines in the department’s handbook
and, most importantly, immoral. 

A few days
after that incident, Perez was given a punitive transfer to the
night shift. Two months later, Perez was told to report to APD psychologist
Carol Logan to undergo what he was told would be a “communication”
exercise. In fact, it was a disguised “fit-for-duty review”
intended to ratify the pre-ordained decision to fire him.

Logan’s four
page report focused entirely on Perez’s moral and religious beliefs.
Perez is a self-described non-denominational fundamentalist Christian,
an ordained minister who home-schools his children. He is also firmly
convinced that protection of civil liberties is the paramount duty
of a peace officer – a duty he regarded, literally, as a sacred
trust.

According to
Logan, the depth of his commitment to his beliefs – beginning with
that perennially unpopular tenet called the Golden Rule – produces
an “impairment” of his ability to absorb new facts, to
communicate with his superiors, and to deal with “feedback.”

As
was the case with Regina Tasca, Ramon Perez’s detractors dredged
up a second incident of “misconduct” involving a refusal
to use unnecessary force. 

By twice displaying
a peace officer’s preference for de-escalation, Perez had established
himself as a repeat offender. He was purged from the APD, a department
that has since done much to distinguish itself – in the face of
fierce and plentiful competition – as one of the most abusive in
the country.

A vast geographic
and cultural gulf separates Ramon Perez, a Fundamentalist Evangelical
from Texas, and Regina Tasca, an openly gay Roman Catholic
from New Jersey. They have at least one critically important thing
in common: Both of them intervened in defense of helpless citizens
facing criminal violence from fellow cops, and learned that for
people who have chosen a career in law enforcement, behaving like
a peace officer is a firing offense.

Reprinted
with permission from Pro
Libertate.

April
30, 2012

William
Norman Grigg [send him mail]
publishes the Pro
Libertate blog and hosts the Pro
Libertate radio program.

Copyright
© 2012 William Norman Grigg

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