The tragic shooting of Amelia Baca is the exclamation point to Las Cruces’s need for a Civilian Police Oversight Board.
Who sez? So far, the NAACP, LULAC, psychiatrist Dr. Ernest Flores, and many others. Several have personally seen nonfatal incidents as appalling as the Baca shooting. Pattie Hartman told the City Council Monday these situations are “social justice” issues, adding, “I’ve warned as many as I could not to call 9-1-1. Amelia Baca was not an isolated incident.”
It’s hard to defend the officer who shot Ms. Baca, based on the video. Yeah, she’s holding knives – but down at her side, not in a threatening manner. She’s in a doorway. He knows she’s mentally troubled. Her daughter and granddaughter keep reminding him. He repeatedly hollers, in English, “Drop the [____] knives!” In his defense, (a) he doesn’t know if she is a threat to someone else inside (or has hurt someone), and (b) she’s closer to him than the wide-angled lapel video might suggest. But he put himself that close. She didn’t approach him.
Hollering ain’t how to deal with someone in a mental health crisis. He doesn’t ask her family members if anyone is inside.” He doesn’t try speaking reassuringly, or ascertain whether she understands English. He could do so, while watching her closely and holding his gun. He’s supposedly had many hours of training. There are a dozen better approaches he should have learned in the first hour.
If this were an isolated incident, . . . but it’s not. How many responsible, respected, knowledgeable citizens need to tell the City Council about seeing several such incidents? How many citizens must die?
Yeah, we have a contract with some agency elsewhere. Dr. Earl Nissen reviewed their annual report. Basically, they summarized several complaints and how the LCPD resolved those. They suggested that “deescalation training” be more than a flier. How many citizen complainants did they call up and ask questions of? None. A key city employee pointed out that “they can only audit what’s submitted to them.” LCPD controls that. Nissen, 90, is so concerned that he’s driven up to Albuquerque monthly to attend meetings of their civilian oversight board. Police officials answer questions directly, in public, and the board can request documents.
A local board can investigate immediately. By contacting complainants (or hearing them at meetings), it can hear local accounts directly, respond personally, and be seen by the public to do that, yet keep sensitive personnel information confidential. As Nissen heard one Albuquerque citizen say at a meeting, “At least we know now who to contact. We have a channel of communication with the police.”
I work with police officers. Many are fine individuals who show real concern for the public. Seems some aren’t. Or get overly excited under pressure. Overall, the record now demands action, and the most constructive action available is an oversight board that can help resolve complaints, improve training, facilitate communications, ensure bad apples are trained better or tossed, clear up misunderstandings, and help build trust between officers and citizens. Members should neither believe everything said by officers nor be biased against them. (Paying police more might help, too.)
In many cities, such boards have made great improvements. For a small fraction of what Las Cruces [we] will pay Sam Bregman and the Bacas.
We all must stop seeing mentally-troubled citizens as “other.” Amelia Baca was much more than her final moments.
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[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 22 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 be available on demand on KRWG’s site.]
[While I obviously think it’s important to hold police accountable, I also think it important to see events from the officer’s point-of-view, if at all possible. Here, he was first on the scene to a call in which [and I have not yet heard the 9-1-1 call] the caller was in fear of Ms. Baca, who had knives and was stabbing the floor in anger. Although he could see she was small, and knew she was mentally troubled, a knife is a knife, and conventional wisdom among cops is that even if you have a gun, you may well get stabbed if the knife-wielder is within ten feet. Yes, watching the video we feel like he shouldn’t have shot, or could have wounded her; but we don’t know what he was trained to do or how it felt to be him in that moment. That’s why, although I tend to hope he’s not a cop much longer, I express no opinion on a criminal charge. Exercises run by DASO a few years back to educate us on how vulnerable a cop could be in various circumstances were effective; and an early experience with LCPD more than 45 years ago was instructive. In that situation, a cop nearly shot an innocent man, but under the circumstances (the man suddenly appearing in a house neighbors had thought was being burglarized, unaware the man had the owner’s permission to stay there) it would have been hard for me to say the officer would have been wrong. But I’m not sure a video would have captured how the moment felt. It’s easy for us to say the shooter of Amelia Baca didn’t have to shoot; but we weren’t there. Conviction of most relevant crimes includes proving (beyond any reasonable doubt) intent. For that and other reasons, I don’t feel comfortable commenting (particularly without all the evidence) on whether or not he should be charged, or with what.
The more important point is that we need a police oversight board. We are killing too many folks we shouldn’t. We could improve training, investigate cases, andhelp build or rebuild trust between community and cops. That’s what has happened elsewhere.
But the nature and authority of the board are important issues the city council needs to consider carefully. It can’t be merely advisory. It must be able to ask for documents and witnesses. It should have some law-enforcement presence, but not too much: above all, we need balanced, thoughtful, experienced people, including perhaps lawyers, psychiatrists, and others. Failure to exercise real care in wording the ordinance and selecting the members would result in failure, and this matter is too important. (Albuquerque’s Police Oversight Board includes nine at large members, meant to be culturally and otherwise diverse, who have not worked for law-enforcement for at least one year, pass a background check, have not engaged in a pattern of unsubstantiated complaints against the police, have “a demonstrated ability to engage in mature, impartial decision-making,” and are committed to “transparency ant impartial decision making.”
We need folks who can understand the police officer’s situation, without automatically criticizing police or automatically accepting their actions – folks who’ll judge each case on facts and evidence, patiently and with concern for all the players.
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