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 Perez, 41, had time to draw his gun and injure one of the
attackers in the shootout near his modest home in the town of
Ocumare del Tuy outside Caracas, but the other shot him in the head
and took his weapon.
The officer died shortly afterwards in a nearby clinic, leaving a
widow and three children.
That same week in November, five other police officers were shot
dead across Venezuela - among 268 murdered in 2014 in one of the
world's most dangerous places to be a cop.
Most of the officers were killed for their guns, cars, motorbikes or
even telephones, according to local monitoring and rights group
Foundation for Due Process, or Fundepro.
The rest were victims of revenge killings or shootouts with
criminals, and one officer was killed during political protests.
With gangs running poor neighborhoods, weapons easily available,
judges and police often on the take, and prosecution rates low,
Venezuela is the world's second worst country for homicides overall,
the United Nations says.
 Lawlessness and violent crime have for long plagued daily life in
Venezuela, and police are increasingly at the sharp end.
"The criminals have conflict weapons, their firepower is infinitely
superior to ours," said a friend and colleague of Perez, still upset
over the death and asking not to be named.
"If I put a criminal in jail, he'll be out within days, and without
doubt, he'll look for me in my house to shoot me dead. And on police
salaries, we can't live in luxury mansions but in 'barrios' or lower
middle-class zones right next to the gangs."
Police murders rose 25 percent in 2014 and have accelerated so far
in 2015 to a rate of nearly one a day, Fundepro says.
'LET THEM DIE'
Under pressure to beat crime after President Nicolas Maduro declared
it his priority at the start of his term, his socialist government
does not give official data on police killings.
Government officials did not respond to requests for comment from
Reuters.
The public is aware of the police murders via media and talk on the
street, but sympathy does not run deep because of disgust at
well-known corruption and crime within police ranks.
"In the U.S., if one policeman is killed, there is an outcry. Here,
no-one raises a voice to support policemen," said Jackeline
Sandoval, a former police lawyer and public prosecutor who heads
Fundepro. "If there's no security for police, what does that say for
the rest of us?"
Her Twitter feed, chronicling police deaths, often draws distasteful
comments. "For me, let them all die, they're mistreating the
students," someone wrote this month, referring to last year's
clashes with demonstrators.
International comparisons show the depth of Venezuela's problem. In
the United States, which has a population 10 times bigger, the FBI
says 27 law enforcement officers were killed in 2013. In Venezuela,
the number that year was 214.
 Even the world's worst homicide hot spot, Honduras, has far fewer
killings of policemen than Venezuela.
Ravaged by gang and drug violence, Honduras had a murder rate of
90.4 per 100,000 people in 2012, versus 53.7 in Venezuela, U.N. data
shows. But Honduras' government says there were 35 police killings
in 2013 and 32 in the first 11 months of last year.
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Though murders of policemen have been shockingly high for several
years now in Venezuela, Fundepro said criminals are becoming
ever-more brazen with some assaults on whole police stations in
order to steal weapons.
In November, 30 men stormed a police base in Guarico state before
dawn to carry off weapons, bullet-proof jackets and uniforms.
SHOT IN THE BAKERY
Among the victims so far this year, Alvaro Blanco was buying bread
in the small town of Tacata when two men followed him in.
One shot the 49-year-old policeman in the back of the head as he was
at the counter, a security camera video showed.
The gunman then coolly leant over Blanco's body to take his gun
before fleeing. Both men were later tracked down by police and
killed in a shootout, local media said.
Blanco's boss, Elisio Guzman, who runs Miranda state's police force,
complained impunity for criminals was endangering his men. He said
his force last year arrested 1,073 people in the act of committing
crimes but 653 of them quickly returned to the street unpunished.
"On top of this, the prisons are overflowing, the (police's) weapons
are inadequate, there are constant death threats."
Private monitoring groups say only about 10 percent of murder cases
end in convictions in Venezuela.
The government concedes that police are often involved in crimes
themselves and it recently "intervened" in several units around the
country, meaning they were raided and had their supervisors removed.
In one, a senior detective was caught cashing a ransom for a
kidnapped businessman, said Freddy Bernal, head of a presidential
commission to "revolutionize" Venezuela's police.
As well as working to root out bad apples, Bernal's team is making
proposals to improve wages, insurance, training and equipment for
policemen. "We need to recover the authority of the state ... give
security to the police," he said.
The government has also launched a disarmament drive, but only
brought in a tiny fraction of the estimated 9-15 million guns
circulating in the nation of 30 million people.
Despite the perils of the job and starting wages of around 7,000
bolivars ($1,628 at the strongest official rate but a mere $39 at
the black market rate), police recruitment days still draw huge
numbers of unemployed young men.
"I know it's dangerous," said Martin Gomez, 21, a youth from
Caracas' Petare slum who was heading to a recruitment event for the
Bolivarian National Police Force set up by Maduro's predecessor Hugo
Chavez. "But I have to eat, don't I? And I'd love to help my
country."
(Editing by Alexandra Ulmer; Additional reporting by Gustavo
Palencia in Tegucigalpa; Editing by Kieran Murray)
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