Sign this petition to stand in solidarity with Karen Ramirez and her family. When you sign this petition, you are urging officials to fire Sgt Hogan and demand justice for the murder of Juanito. Karen did not deserve the charges placed on her. We demand these charges and the Allen County Courthouse ban be dropped. We also demand Sgt. Gerald Hogan, the arresting officer, be fired.

On April 1, Karen Lee Ramirez of Ann Arbor, MI, was in Fort Wayne to attend a preliminary hearing for her teen nephew's murderer. Ramirez’s nephew, Juan Jose Ramirez, was murdered alongside his friend in December 2021. After the hearing was cut short due to the criminal defense attorney requesting more time for discovery, the victim’s mother attempted to hit the defendant as he was being returned but missed and accidentally hit the bailiff.

Ramirez returned to the courtroom to retrieve her purse and mother. As she entered, she was surrounded by officers and began receiving scrutiny from Sgt Hogan. Hogan approached her and yelled, “I knew you were trouble when I saw you with that flag,” referring to the Mexican flag she had wrapped around her shoulders. Hogan called Ramirez racial slurs while demanding other officers arrest her as she tried to explain why she had returned. Eventually, she was arrested, without having having her Miranda rights read, and was taken into custody for the weekend. She did not receive medical attention while in custody and had to wait until she returned to Michigan to find medical assistance and was told she was suffering from a concussion. During Ramirez’s initial hearing, she was told that the officer was pressing charges and that she was banned from the courthouse unless she was there for a hearing of her own.

Sgt Gerald Hogan’s racially-motivated actions led him and other officers to injure and arrest an innocent woman. Ramirez’s criminal trespassing and disorderly conduct charges must be dropped at once, and Sgt Hogan should be fired from the Allen County Sheriff's Office.