A Bump in the Road toward Municipal Transparency?

 A police officer killed Amelia Baca. Maybe he had to. Maybe not.

LCPD knows his bodycam footage would help the public (and the family) start understanding this tragedy. LCPD knows state law requires it to give us copies of that footage as soon as possible after requests, and certainly within 15 days. LCPD is playing games to delay that.

Showing us this video is “an essential function of a representative government and an integral part of the routine duties” of City employees. The New Mexico Supreme Court recently reiterated, in a police-shooting case, that IPRA requires “prompt and scrupulous compliance.”

By law, giving requestors this video is a high-priority task. The Sun-News asked for it April 19. The City said it needed 15 days. On May 4, the City said it needed 15 more. (Without labeling the request “unduly burdensome,” the City has no legal right to such delay.)

LCPD, fortunately, hasn’t claimed it can withhold the video because there’s an investigation. The City has provided seventeen related videos, some devoid of content, some showing post-shooting interviews of witnesses, including police officers (though not the shooter). One, in which a woman describes repeatedly begging the officer not to shoot her mentally “off” Grandma, is extremely saddening. My heart goes out to her.

The City has redacted witnesses’ birth dates and young children’s names. The City has also redacted, probably improperly, the shooter’s name. (IF officials answered my phone calls, they’d probably claim he’s been “accused but not charged” of a crime.)

Releasing selected footage from the bodycam video to affect public opinion makes this willful delay worse. First, it’s unfair and misleading. It also establishes that city officials have watched the video. (For some, not watching it would be incompetence.) If they had time to edit it, which was not required, they have time to release it, as the law commands. With redactions if necessary.

IPRA provides a narrow law-enforcement exception for “confidential sources, methods, and information.” Here, a demented female holding knives approaches a police officer and gets shot. Was she a confidential source? Did he fire his gun in some confidential way? (If he used some secret LCPD method of calming her, it tragically failed.) The law protects innocent witnesses or victims; but is LCPD protecting them from grandmother’s ghost or from the officer who shot the video?

This is a matter of great public interest. The City’s conduct is arrogant and illegal. It’s also unwise, compounding the tragedy. It’s unfair to the officer, who deserves a fair and impartial review of what happened. Rigging an inept dog-and-pony show to “defend” him undermines the credibility of whatever cogent points he may offer in his defense.

Even the video can’t put us in the officer’s shoes, confronting Ms. Baca in real time. The very wide angle of body cameras distorts distances, and thus speed. Folks should factor that in. But the law requires LCPD to give citizens that opportunity forthwith, not when it’s more convenient. People see LCPD violating the law to protect an employee who may have committed a crime or performed his duties negligently. Those duties are sufficiently challenging that the brass oughtn’t to complicate them by squandering community members’ trust.

Here’s one more reason we need a review board. And I’m disappointed the City is not only playing games but declining to discuss the issues – presumably because LCPD lacks plausible answers to our many questions.

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[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 8 May, 2022, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7 FM) and KTAL-LP. (101.5 FM – http://www.lccommunityradio.org/), and will presently be available on demand on KRWG’s site.]

[One should note that the City’s position is an improvement over its response to other such situations, and acknowledges the law more accurately. For years (as was done elsewhere in the case I mention, Jones v. NM Dept. of Public Safety), law-enforcement entities ignored the language of IPRA and asserted a broad law-enforcement exception covering ongoing investigations. The law didn’t authorize that, but police departments kept saying it. The 2019 amendment made the limited nature of the exception (copied in below) unmistakably clear: it’s to protect “confidential sources, methods, and information” and names of folks “accused but not charged with crime,” and to make sure malefactors aren’t handed information to help find vulnerable witnesses and victims of certain crimes. Jones then confirmed that. Instead of such a broad assertion, LCPD here said it needed the more time to scrub the videos of confidential information. Basically LCPD seems to have silenced-out mentions of the shooter’s name, anyone’s birthdate, and the names of a couple of small children. LCPD has not deigned to state why it contends that IPRA permits it not to release the officer’s name. The best I can come up with for them is that he’s “an individual accused but not charged with a crime,” which raises interesting questions. Has he been accused of a crime? By whom?]

[The actual exception is stated in Chapter 14, Article 2, Section 1 as:

D.  portions of law enforcement records that reveal:

(1)       confidential sources, methods or information; or

(2)       before charges are filed, names, address, contact information, or protected personal identifier information as defined in this Act of individuals who are:

(a) accused but not charged with a crime; or

(b) victims of or non-law-enforcement witnesses to an alleged crime of:  1) assault with intent to commit a violent felony pursuant to Section 30-3-3 NMSA 1978 when the violent felony is criminal sexual penetration; 2) assault against a household member with intent to commit a violent felony pursuant to Section 30-3-14 NMSA 1978 when the violent felony is criminal sexual penetration; 3) stalking pursuant to Section 30-3A-3 NMSA 1978; 4) aggravated stalking pursuant to Section 30-3A-3.1 NMSA 1978; 5) criminal sexual penetration pursuant to Section 30-9-11 NMSA 1978; or 6) criminal sexual contact pursuant to Section 30-9-12 NMSA 1978.

Law enforcement records include evidence in any form received or compiled in connection with a criminal investigation or prosecution by a law enforcement or prosecuting agency, including inactive matters or closed investigations to the extent that they contain the information listed in this subsection; provided that the presence of such information on a law enforcement record does not exempt the record from inspection; ]