Up your Game, City of Las Cruces!

Dear City of Las Cruces: up your game!

Despite good intentions, you look like the 2-13 New York’s football Giants.

A humongous payout for a cop’s groundless killing of some poor woman? The AG reporting that you violated the Open Meetings Law?

What’s holding back the government of my favorite city? Only it’s own arrogance.

We’ve paid huge sums to the families of folks unjustifiably killed by our police offices. As an alternate municipal judge I met caring officers who seemed more concerned about helping the poor and addled than about bullying them. I’ve watched the heartbreaking video of Officer Jonah Hernandez getting murdered, after approaching the killer courteously.

But, systemically, setting the Guinness world record for small cities paying bereaved families suggests a problem. So might official accusations of secretive law-breaking.

What matters more than these headlines is that each followed folks warning the City, trying to help, and getting stiffed.

Police misbehavior? Citizens busted our butts preparing an ordinance for a citizens’ police oversight board. Sometimes those work well, as even progressive police chiefs realize, and there’s evidence they can reduce crime. Sometimes they don’t. It’s important to organize one correctly, and choose good people. We gave the City a reasoned proposal. Mayor Ken Miyagashima refused a work session for discussion. Surprisingly, four counselors voted to hear us anyway. We made a presentation. The Mayor and Councilor Tessa Abeyta hated the idea, but other councilors showed varying degrees of interest. Those councilors (a majority) sought further talks to refine the idea with city staff. Ken directed it to a semi-secret committee that he and Abeyta controlled. We never heard any invitation to discuss anything.

I can’t say such a committee would have prevented the Gomez killing; but if it improved things at all, that’d be money well spent. The committee’s cost would be a pimple on the nose of any recent payout for police misconduct.

The city experienced a scandal in 2018. The council responded by creating an Inspector-General position and an oversight committee intended to identify, and prevent or expose, misconduct and misuse of funds. The City stalled on the IG, let the Oversight Committee wilt to nothingness, then weakened the committee. That’s not conduct calculated to prevent mistakes.

Transparency? This Open Meetings violation follows violations of the Inspection of Public Records Act. Michael Hays requested documents, got stiffed, and politely warned the City it was breaking the law. A now-departed city attorney blew him off, forcing him to sue, successfully. (Under that attorney’s instructions, City Clerk Christine Rivera, now urging the City to ask legislators to weaken IPRA, broke IPRA.) In February, when the city appeared guilty of an illegal “rolling quorum” regarding the city manager position, the City blew off the Bulletin’s warning that officials were breaking the law. But the City can’t tell Raul Torres to go pound sand.

With the Memorial Medical Center problem, the City seems finally on the right track, but only after newspaper columns, Yoli yammering, and even national coverage. (The AG is looking at that too.)

I think we have some really good people, in Police Chief Jeremy Story, City Manager Ikani Taumoepeau, City Attorney Brad Douglas, and several of our city councilors.

However: citizens are not all idiots. A diversity of views on things usually improves outcomes. Holding a nice position doesn’t mean turn off your brains. You can’t do it alone. Together, we can do a lot better.

                                                         – 30 – 

 

[This column appeared Sunday, 29 December, 2024, on the Las Cruces Sun-News website and will presently be up on KRWG’s website, under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM, streaming at www.lccommunityradio.org/). For further information on the topic of this column, please go to my blog, https://soledadcanyon.blogspot.com/ .]

[Sorry for not posting it Sunday, as usual! And Happy New Year!]

Happy Holidays! Merry Christmas!

Christmas is not a bad time to consider what really matters.

It almost certainly wasn’t Jesus’s actual birthday. It closely follows Winter Solstice. Romans had held festivals December 17-23 to honor the agriculture god, feasting and exchanging presents; and on December 25^th they celebrated the sun god’s birth. So why not Jesus’s “birthday.” (The Bible doesn’t say. A slender textual clue suggests that Gabriel visited the Virgin Mary to give her the good news in December, which would put His birth in or around September.) The first official Roman Church mention of December 25 comes nearly 350 years later.

Still, Christmas, with our focus on family feasting and gift-giving and reunions, brings us together in a mostly peaceful and reflective way. That’s so for most of us, not just Christians.

Jesus reportedly said and lived some things worth hearing and emulating.

He told us to treat the poor and downtrodden as we would Him. He urged us to welcome strangers. His whole life and preaching emphasized considering others’ needs before one’s own interest, being generous, avoiding greed and manipulation of others for profit. Fitting a camel, which is a bit bulky, through a needle’s eye is how he estimated the prospect for Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates going to Heaven. Like Buddha’s disciples, Jesus’s disposed of their worldly wealth and followed him, living a simpler and harsher life than most folks. He also told us not to judge others, since none of us is without serious faults. And that when someone slaps you, offer him a second shot.

Whatever your religion, code, or philosophy, if several of those principles aren’t central, consider them -- not ‘cause Jesus said so, or to secure a condo in the clouds, but because a substantial body of experience-based opinion says they are the route to a better life here on earth. (How they work later on is beyond my pay grade.)

All that is pretty familiar.

I’d add some.

Be grateful. (To Whom or what, or just grateful, is up to you.) Gratitude is both an appropriate and a healthy attitude toward life. You are incredibly privileged to live at all, to live a human life, to live a relatively free and healthy life. We take all that for granted; but recalling it helps us keep in mind our privilege, or good luck, and the short nature of our lives, and savor life.

There’s medical evidence that gratitude can help improve and even slightly extend our lives. The same is true of laughter. And of contemplation.

Jesus didn’t say, “Meditate as often as you can, and write in your journal,” but solitary contemplation marked the earliest really committed followers of Jesus and Buddha. Thoughtful atheists also recommend it. Most of us fear it. We fear emptying our our time and minds to contemplate, because there’s so much we really don’t care to face. That there is a hell of a good reason to get quiet, walking or sitting or writing, and shake hands with your demons.

Particularly stuck in our cacophonous culture of Internet chaos and vitriolic partisanship, battered by corporate and political lies, it’s tough to hear one’s own inner voice. But that’s the one that could help us find some inner peace.

I don’t suggest ceasing to fight for a better world. This highly imperfect world is the only one we got. Let’s enjoy trying to help it

                                                     – 30 – 

[This 22 December, 2024 Sunday column will presently be up on the Las Cruces Sun-News website and also on KRWG’s website, under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM, streaming at www.lccommunityradio.org/). For further information on the topic of this column, please go to my blog, https://soledadcanyon.blogspot.com/ .]

[Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! Xin Nian Kwai Le! Have a warm fire and a warm famly! And Best Wishes in whatever language, religion, or culture, or philosophy suits you. ]

[I was never highly religious. My father was an atheist with Jewish heritage, and my mother an Episcopalian. But we did all love Christmas. It helped that we always lived where photographs of our Christmasses, if I could show ‘em to you, could be Christmas cards, with a tall, well-decorated tree and a lively fire in the fireplace, and usually snow on the ground. I spent most of my first dozen Christmasses in a small cottage in a forest, on a slender, curving road called Memory Lane, without even a house number until I was 6 or 10. Then we moved to an older and larger house, with a larger living room and fireplace, an old-fashioned country home people admired when they saw it. Both places had extra tall ceilings in the living room. And my mother, from northern Maine, knew how to keep Christmas, decorating the tree especially well and leading kids in singing carols. Fortunately, our parents loved us, and had enough love in them to love my sister and me, too. We had our battles, as I grew older, but loved each other as long as they lived. I never forget how fortunate I was. ]

 

Thoughts on Truly Decreasing Crime

[sorry i forgot to post this yesterday!]

Everyone’s shouting about crime, but few are quietly offering cogent suggestions.

One critical problem for police, judges, and the public is that someone commits a crime, gets arrested, but must be released because of mental incompetency.

Federal and state constitutions guarantee folks accused of crimes a fair trial with a lawyer; but if defendant can’t understand the proceedings or help that lawyer, no fair trial is possible. As a sometime municipal judge, I had to let people go, unless they were extremely dangerous. I couldn’t try ‘em. Or incarcerate them or force treatment on them.

These are not issues our local governments can fix.

These are difficult problems. As LCPD Chief Jeremy Story said Wednesday, “Competency is a huge issue. It’s a complex problem.” He mentioned a woman with hundreds of cases – petty misdemeanors such as breaking windows, trespassing, shoplifting – whom he can do nothing about.

We can do better. “You’re incompetent, so skate free!” is no longer a sane option, for defendants or for the community. The state has been trying some promising new ways of getting defendant/addict in a room with therapist early on, using forensic navigators, but those programs are limited.

Other states and the feds authorize competency restoration. The court orders defendant to participate in a program to restore sufficient mental competency to understand the legal proceedings and participate in their defense. This may occur on an in-patient or out-patient basis, or even in jail. It may involve education, mental health treatment, or other efforts, including managing the defendant’s disruptive behaviors or other problems that impede the restoration process. Courts provide a reasonable period of time, such as 6-12 months.

What’s critical is resources: personnel, solid training of that personnel, beds in facilities, etc. Which our flush state can afford, but has been doing poorly on for a while. Governor Martinez destroyed our mental health treatment system, and there are gaping holes in the performance of current state leaders.

Programs in Minnesota, California, and Texas – e.g., both progressive and not – offer models worth looking at.

We might also make better use of our involuntary commitment statute, which authorizes “An interested person who reasonably believes that an adult is suffering from a mental disorder and presents a likelihood of serious harm to the adult's own self or others,” to request the D.A. to investigate whether a thirty-day period of evaluation and treatment is warranted. The D.A. must act within 72 hours. He may petition the the court for a hearing. The court issues a summons. “If the proposed client is summoned and fails to appear . . . or appears without having been evaluated, the court may order the proposed client to be detained for evaluation.”

Presumably. “an interested person” could be a friend or relative, a shopkeeper, or anyone with a reason to care about that the proposed patient might do to himself or others. Some say involuntary treatment never works. That’s reasonable, but never say never. Experience shows that sometimes, though the person in need of treatment couldn’t or wouldn’t have asked, an enforced period of contact with caring professionals, free of normal environmental and peer pressures, can trigger an interest in getting clean and well. And the person will be off the street and living a healthier life for a spell.

We must improve our competency law; authorize competency-restoration; invest heavily in personnel and training, statewide; and ensure that all these laws work together.

                                                 – 30 –

 

[This column appeared Sunday, 15 December, 2024, and will presently be up on the Las Cruces Sun-News website and also on KRWG’s website, under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM, streaming at www.lccommunityradio.org/). For further information on the topic of this column, please go to my blog, https://soledadcanyon.blogspot.com/ .]

Whether or not it's Genocide, We Should Oppose What Israel is Doing in Gaza

We must not let our passions about international bad conduct lead to mistreatment of individuals here in the U.S. whatever their countries or religions do elsewhere.

Is Israel committing genocide in Gaza?

Genocide means acts committed with the intent to destroy, wholly or partially, a national, ethnic, or religious group, by killing or seriously harming members of the group or inflicting conditions calculated to bring about the group's destruction. It’s an international crime. South Africa’s formal charges mean the International Court of Justice may some day decide the genocide issue.

Hebrew University’s ProfessorAmos Goldberg, a top expert, says, “Yes, it is genocide. It is so difficult and painful to admit it, but . . .after six months of brutal war we can no longer avoid this conclusion.”

“Intent” is a key issue. Israeli officials say and do some things that evidence an intent to destroy. In U.S. law, if you intentionally act in a way that is likely to kill someone, that’s ample intent. Destroying homes, schools, hospitals, and water supplies sure sounds like creating “conditions calculated to bring about the group’s destruction.” Legally, Israel’s killing of 50,000 civilians, many women and children, is intentional.

Israel argues “self-defense.” Certainly on October 7^th Hamas massacred innocent civilians who’d done nothing to deserve being beaten, raped, kidnaped, and/or massacred.

But if a dozen KKK members terrorists bombed an NAACP meeting, no one would argue that authorities could destroy the culprits’ hometown, or state, and everyone in it.

Professor Goldberg argues that “the level and pace of indiscriminate killing, destruction, mass expulsions, displacement, famine, executions, the wiping out of cultural and religious institutions, the crushing of elites (including the killing of journalists), and the sweeping dehumanization of the Palestinians — create an overall picture of genocide, of a deliberate conscious crushing of Palestinian existence in Gaza.”

Nor does perceived danger excuse genocide. Groups in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and Burma have arguably committed genocide because of what Goldberg calls, “an authentic sense of self-defence.” Genocide doesn’t require the insanity and complete lack of provocation that characterized Nazi Germany’s conduct.

“Genocide” or not, killing or maiming 100,000 civilians is not conduct that the U.S. should support.

Legally, the argument might differ in a declared war between nations. Dresden, Hiroshima, and German bombing of London were ugly acts of war. However, that excuse didn’t apply to German treatment of Jews and others. Nor does it here. The whole pattern of Israeli abuses of Palestinians, including extensive violence by Israelis against West Bank residents that has amounted to usurpation of that area and rendering its population homeless, is further evidence of an intent to destroy.]

Each side can accurately claim extensive and unjustified violence perpetrated against it.

In Israel’s defense, Britain set a forest fire and walked away. By promising Arabia to eveyone during World War I and continuing its conduct during World War II, Britain (largely) created a situation where deserving folks had honest but inconsistent claims to territory, with hostilities magnified by their differing religions.

The rest of the world should likely have helped maintain peace during the last century, and perhaps should act to restore peace now; but that won’t happen. We can only hope that the better instincts of both Israelis and Palestinians, and weariness of mutual mass destruction, somehow come to the fore.

Some truths are incredibly sad. But opposing genocide – or whatever softer term you choose – ain’t anti-Semitic.

                                                                  – 30 –

 

[This column appeared Sunday, 8 December, 2024, in the Las Cruces Sun-News

and on the newspaper's website, and will presently be posted also on KRWG’s website, under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM, streaming at www.lccommunityradio.org/). For further information on the topic of this column, please go to my blog, https://soledadcanyon.blogspot.com/ .]

[This is a hard column to write, for many reasons. I have close friends who are Israeli; and they are torn by all this, suffering a mix of fear and concern, loathing for Mr. Netanyahu. (Said one friend, “Netanyahu cares only about his own interest.” ) I think they’re mortified at the mounting death toll, but wholly uncertain not only what they personally could do about this but, perhaps how Israel, even with its ideal leader, could at this point make this situation anywhere near right. I’m hearing concern for the dead, as well as fears that Israel’s conduct will ultimately endanger the country, rather than saving it.]

[I sure can’t imagine how this gets made right! I have no wisdom to offer.]

[Whether or not this is the international crime of “genocide” isn’t the main issue. However, it seems worth noting that while this may be genocide, it feels like something different and less purely evil [more justified, if such could ever be justified] than the Holocaust. The Holocaust destroyed people of a whole ethnic group for no cogent reason, with absolutely no provocation. The Middle East is different. I blame Britain, for promising Arabia to everyone for most of the 20^th Century, then putting Israel and Palestine in a box they each believed they owned, and watching the inevitable violence from afar. It’s like the difference between murders: Richard Speck’s massacre of 8 student nurses in Chicago, versus a wife’s murder of her abusive husband is loading the deck unfairly, but Speck versus a man’s murder of his wife’s lover, or rapist? Still murder, but.]

[Whether Israel should have been created, whether it should have been created where it was created, are questions beyond my pay grade. However, Israel is there, and has been; and Palestine has too. Each has the right to exist. I desperately wish we could entice them to peace; but each has brutalized the other too extensively to make that emotionally appetizing to either. It’s also tragic that each side is currently being led by folks who don’t have the common interest as their top priority. Neither Netanyahu nor Hamas is improving the lot of their respective constituencies.]

[The column's first sentence deserves emphasis.  We should not be harassing or hating Jewish or Muslim students for what Israel and Hamas do, nor should  we mistreat in any way folks from Russia, India, or any other country for the nation's sins.  That's just plain good sense and fairness: this is the United States, where all ought to be welcome; individuals have little control over their governments, and individuals in dictatorships have even less.  I urge everyone who feels strongly about international events to keep this in mind.  Maybe I feel strongly about it because I traveled internationally and experienced courtesy and warmth from people who loathed some of our country's worst behavior.  It's also true that both Jews and Palestinians have been poorly treated by the world's "great powers." ] 

A Day at the Beach - 1940

This photo moves me greatly.  It shows two sisters.  The younger, lying on the sand, is highly imaginative, but even her creative mind likely cannot imagine that soon she will suffer so horribly and needlessly that everyone reading this knows her name, has heard of her writing, perhaps has even seen the play named for her, of which Las Cruces had an excellent production just a few months ago. 

The link to that play didn't seem to work when I posted this on Facebook: https://soledadcanyon.blogspot.com/2024/10/remembering-anne-frank-in-challenging.html