A Local Controversy

Except maybe some in the county administration, we all want local law-enforcement slots to be filled – and filled with officers with sufficient character, skills, patience, and judgment.

Our sheriff’s department spends maybe $5,000 on checking background and character, including having applicants take a multi-phase Pre-Employment Test that’s then evaluated by a certified expert. Dr. Susan Cave. Dr. Cave also interviews each applicant before recommending acceptance or refusal of a candidate. She does this for numerous counties and pueblos. Her report includes all the relevant facts she has on applicants, good or bad. This is standard practice.

Months ago, DASO had 19 recruits who’d gone through the process. HR jumped in and terminated five,. Sheriff Kim Stewart disagreed with this unprecedented action, but there was no appeal process! By January, the remaining fourteen cadets were close to graduation. Suddenly, pencil-pushers at County HR demanded that half be fired.

Cave and several law-enforcement authorities call this “unprecedented” and “senseless.” (It’d also give seven cadets a great lawsuit.) Sonya Chavez, Director of the New Mexico Law Enforcement Academy, which has oversight responsibilities toward the county academy, says, “We have no official comment, but if they are at the County Academy they have been through a pretty exhaustive process and they meet the basic state requirements.” City sources say HR makes sure basic rules are followed, then doesn’t interfere.

Why did HR non-experts suddenly pick out some minor score on a small piece of the test, or some point in a recruit’s background, and direct Stewart to fire people?

Why wait so long, letting us pay these folks for months? Why arrogantly assume you know better than the expert? If Dr. Cave mentions a recruit’s bitterness toward an ex-spouse, but sees no huge red flag, why assume you can make a better judgment than she – without her education, her experience, or the personal interview? If a recruit stole beers ten years ago when working as a bartender, is some clerk best positioned to decide how important that is? And why not raise your belated concerns more collegially, by Dr. Cave or Sheriff Stewart a question?

The sheriff appealed and HR recently cut the “Fire these seven!” order to “Fire two!” Stewart said, “You fire ‘em!” (HR reportedly fired one by breaching chain-of-command and ordering Stewart’s Major to do it.)

I wondered why. HR and county management have mostly not returned my phone calls seeking some explanation.

One very knowledgeable county source, not associated either with DASO or with HR, said HR has long been a problem.

Wednesday afternoon, County Commission Chair Chris Schialjo-Hernandez told me that the County is following all applicable state laws, that he couldn’t comment because of pending litigation, and that there’ll be a public explanation at the regular County Commission meeting at 9 a.m. Tuesday. Meanwhile, the County has filed a legal action to mandate that Stewart certify the graduating class, which she has done.

I hope Tuesday management will at least try to explain why this unprecedented interference with law enforcement was necessary to our safety. (We can’t see people’s personnel files; and if we were arguing about one guy HR thought was crazy and Stewart didn’t, I’d not have written a column. But 7 of 14 – actually, 12 of 19?)

That sounds more like sabotage than care. More like settling old scores than like trying to run a county properly. But maybe we’ll learn different on Tuesday.

                                  – 30 --

The above column appeared Sunday, 23 February, in the Las Cruces Sun-News , sub nom “Filling Empty DASO Jobs Now a Power Struggle,” and should be posted soon on the newspaper’s website, as well as on the KRWG 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 / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). ]

[I’ll be interested to see whether the county even tries to explain HR’s conduct at Tuesday’s meeting, set for 9 a.m. ]

[This week, I left messages for County Manager Scott Andrews, Assistant County Manager Deb Weir, Human Resources Director Meg Haines, Human Resources Administrator Brandon Masters, and others. No one cared to explain or defend HR’s conduct. No one deigned to tell me to go to hell, either. I did get a strange call from a nice young lady named Amanda Parra, who said she handled “public safety” for the County, but I couldn’t figure out why she was calling for me. I was going to give up. Finally when I recited some facts and said that from what I’d heard so far, the County was acting stupidly, but that I’d love to hear someone from the County explain or defend the conduct, or tell me why it wasn’t stupid, she said that she was authorized to read or send me a statement which, when she started reading it, was obviously non-responsive. I reiterated that I start columns and things often look one way, then, after further discussion, look another, and that I’d love to have someone from the county call me to discuss this, she undertook to pass on that message.

For the record, the County’s statement was,

Per our phone call, the following statement can be attributed to Doña Ana County. 

"Following Sheriff Kim Stewart's written notice that she would not commission recent graduates of the law enforcement academy, Doña Ana County filed a Writ of Mandamus in the 3rd Judicial District Court to ensure that the recent graduates are able to begin serving as deputies.  We are aware of the statement published online by Sheriff Stewart, via her personal social media account, where she states she has commissioned seven of the graduates. Sheriff Stewart has yet to confirm this to the Court or the County administration, and has not issued any other statement regarding the remaining cadets and whether she will commission them by the deadline set by the judge.  We continue to seek positive resolution with Sheriff Stewart that prioritizes the safety of our residents and the well-being of our deputies."

That doesn’t answer the question. Rather, it covers the low-hanging fruit. At some point during the back and forth, which involved other examples of what Stewart felt was HR overreaching, Stewart said some version of, “Well, then, I won’t commission anyone.” The County jumped into court to order her to do that, which in fact she did within days. There’s a hearing set for March. Sounds like someone wanted to sue – and with Stewart not having a lawyer, since the county attorney represents the County, why not?

But that doesn’t tell us much.  Interestingly, Weir and Stewart go back a long ways: https://soledadcanyon.blogspot.com/2015/07/jury-orders-dona-ana-county-to-pay-135.html. ]

 

 

Protecting All of Us as Best We Can

This week’s news events include the one-year anniversary of a crazy guy’s tragic, senseless killing of Las Cruces Police Officer Jonah Hernandez and the trial of Officer Brad Lunsford for the tragic (and perhaps unnecessary) death of Presley Eze, who was passing through town. Let me quickly add that I do not pre-judgee Officer Lunsford,. I damned sure pre-judge Hernandez’s killer, because the video leaves no room for reasonable doubt that his action was unjustifiable.

These are evidence that we need better criminal competency laws – and a citizen’s police oversight board. The Hernandez killing occurred in the context of a public demand for a better balance between defendants’ rights and the rights of citizens not to be victimized repeatedly by offenders who can’t be tried, because of their mental incompetency, but aren’t “dangerous” enough to commit, pending trial, to protect the public. The Eze killing occurred in the context of a disproportionate number of “questionable” officer killings of civilians, for which we have recently paid out tens of millions of dollars. (Wednesday, a jury found Lunsford guilty of voluntary manslaughter, a verdict sure to be appealed.)

There’s real progress toward a legislative reform of the competency issue. Since lawyer Joe Cervantes, a powerful state senator who strongly opposed the less thought-out bills that Governor Lujan-Grisham urged a 2024 special session to consider, is a sponsor of this legislation, I like its chances.

H.B. 4 would provide for “community-based competency restoration” for non-dangerous defendants, while expanding the list of crimes that could spark involuntary commitment. It would smooth out the legal process to treat rather than punish non-dangerous defendants whose mental limitations mean they can’t legally be tried, but also that jailing them may not help. This follows pilot-program experience, including here, with improving how we bring people needing treatment together with people providing treatment. That’s gotta help.

It’ll help more if we also pass three bills intended to rebuild New Mexico’s behavioral health system, savaged by then-Governor Susana Martinez ten years ago. Legislative leaders have noted that better laws regarding therapy for defendants can’t do much if therapy isn’t readily available.

We should deep-six a stupid bill that’d increase fentanyl-trafficking sentences. Jailing people often makes things worse, and the feds tried something similar that didn’t work. Too, I suspect some people selling small amounts do so to feed their own habit – and don’t deserve a huge sentence. With marijuana isn’t, I remember college friends saying “If you find some weed, buy a lid for me too.” That’d make someone a “trafficker.”

Meanwhile, we must take such sensible actions as we can to minimize chances of deaths like Eze’s, Amelia Baca’s, Antonio Valenzuela’s, and Teresa ($20 million) Gomez’s. One important step is an oversight commission. In ___, the City Council directed that proponents and city staff, including law enforcement, discuss and refine a citizens’ proposal and bring it back on the agenda. Mayor Ken Miyagashima, who’d opposed the commission’s action, slyly sabotaged the project by assigning discussions to a semi-secret committee he and fellow opponent Tessa Abeyta controlled, and permitting no discussion. The council should insist that staff follow the council’s command by having the City Attorney, Police Chief Jeremy Story, and others meet with citizens to refine the proposal for a yea-or-nay vote. Lives matter – and so do millions of public bucks.

We should all mourn Jonah Hernandez, a good guy who did NOTHING to deserve getting slaughtered.

                            – 30 --

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 16 February, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and should be posted soon on the newspaper’s website, as well as on the KRWG 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 / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). ]

[One stray thought: reading about Lunsford’s possible sentence, it startled me to find mention of a possible firearm enhancement. Maybe the law touches on this, but my first thought was that Lunsford should NOT be subject to that. Firearm enhancement exists because firearms are especially dangerous and most of us aren’t carrrying one during most of our interactions with others. Often, we would need to bring one specially. It ain’t so, for a cop. He’s carrying the damned thing almost always, certainly when in uniform. Therefore it’s always within reach, if there’s a dispute or he’s in danger, or thinks he is. So, I don’t think he should suffer extra punishment. It ain’t like he carried a gun specially into a discussion with an ex-girlfriend, or whatever. (This isn’t anything I’ve thought-out or researched, but a first impression.) ]

Evading Wildfires

    I’d planned to write very few columns on the national scene this year, but it’s hard to take our eyes off the political wildfire destroy familiar landmarks of democracy, even to catch up with the fates of health, public safety, and other bills I wanted to back during our state legislature.
    What, I wondered, did progressive provincial legislatures accomplish in 1932-33, while Hitler gained power?
    Turns out that Prussia’s progressive parliament expanded workers’ rights and social welfare programs, and improved public education and police professionalism.   However, in right-winger Franz von Papen took over, appointing himself Reich Commissioner.  That probably wasn’t legal; but German courts, like the U.S. Supreme Court that recently declared our President could not be criminally liable for crimes carried out while in office, let it slide.  This greatly helped Hitler consolidate power when he became Chancellor in 1933.
    Fortunately, a right-wing coup in New Mexico seems unlikely. But it’s not impossible.
    I’ve wondered, too, whether state legislators are having as hard a time as I am controlling their eyes.  I hope and trust they’re finding ways.  Because what they’re doing will matter a great deal to us, particularly the most vulnerable among us, assuming the blaze doesn’t destroy us.
    We absolutely should let all New Mexicans vote on whether or not to pay our legislators, as every other state does.  That means poor and middle-class folks can run, and maybe stay somewhat honest, while now you have to be rich or retired, or a trial lawyer.  Glad that passed a committee.
    We absolutely should provide oversight of acquisitions, mergers, and other transactions involving changes of control or assets of hospitals and other health care entities.  It’s too common now for private-equity to buy a hospital and bleed serious healthcare out of existence – or bankrupt the place by dealing at odd rates with entities indirectly owned by the hospital’s indirect owners.  We also need to protect whistle blowers - the employees so appalled by bad conduct that they’ll speak truths to government agencies or elderly column-writers.   We should bolster recruitment initiatives to stem the shortage of health-care workers here.  (We must better balance the interests of doctors and patients who’ve suffered malpractice – or between greedy hospitals and greedy malpractice lawyers.  “Tort reform” shouldn’t mean save hospital profits and screw poor folks; but I’ve seen disgusting abuse of the law by plaintiffs’ malpractice lawyers.  
    Also more delicate than most citizens would acknowledge are some of the public safety initiatives.  Some candidates always shout “Crime!” to justify jailing everyone and trampling Constitutional rights, but crime right now is a far more serious problem than many of us progressives care to admit.  But solutions must balance a host of interests and considerations more delicately than we usually manage.
    We must pay and protect our peace officers better – and also set up mechanisms to make them more professional – and safeguard citizens from some police officers.
    We need universal child care funding and early childhood development.  Historically, the chance to learn the skills and language success required  was primarily a privilege of the rich.  Universal public education has made great strides.  We’re incredibly literate.  But the kind of emotional/psychological well-being head start some of us got from loving, literate, thoughtful parents who were not hampered by poverty, should be there for all the kids we can create it for.
    Kudos to all the folks working on this stuff sincerely in the public interest.
                – 30 – 

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 9 February, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and should be posted soon on the newspaper’s website, as well as on the KRWG 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 / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). ]

[Particularly fascinating to me right now is that so many folks who voted to elect Mr. Trump and whose interests will not be served by the Trump-Musk effort to shape our government into one that does less for regular folks and better serves corporations, do not yet see the danger in abandoning democratic safeguards to let Musk run free. That’s scary. I think a critical mass of such folks won’t see what they’re losing until far too late, when it bites them personally but most of their potential allies for change are jailed, dead, or fled. Or merely intimidated. As Musk uses unusual financial knowledge to interfere with folks lives, Patel uses an FBI stripped of apolitical investigators to start nuisance investigations of enemies, and folks who committed violent felonies for Trump and were pardoned by Trump commit new violent felonies for Trump, many will indeed fall silent.]

[For now, we U.S. citizens are living in two very different realities.]

A True Danger!

The 47th President’s Administration is starting about as foreseen, but with some differences.

We knew that in 2016 he was an inexperienced narcissist who figured everything would change when he bellowed at it. It didn’t. Shockingly, the rightwing sycophants he’d installed in important cabinet positions (AG, Defense Secretary, even his military chiefs of staff) found that vestiges of ethics, patriotism, or good sense, meant there was some dung they just couldn’t eat.

We knew that this time he was resolved to appoint people no hint of backbone. He has. I thought he’d appoint some experienced but bombastic defense secretary. He appointed a joke, except that it’s mostly Putin, Xi, and the mullahs in Iran who are laughing at it. Behind their sleeves.

The speed and comprehensiveness of the viciousness are surprising. Mr. Trump, having thought he could command this vast beast, the civil service or “Deep State,” now knew (or had minions who knew) that they needed someone loyal to him in every cell of the beast. He also has a cadre of folks, including the creators of the 2025 blueprint, who understood this and were prepared to kiss his posterior hard enough and often enough to gain his trust to do as they liked. He himself cares little for policy, except that he hates anyone who’s opposed or belittled him, and any favoring of women, folks of color, poor folks, or queer folks at the expense of Anglo frat boys and billionaires’ profits – or bore the scent of Mr. Biden of Mr. Obama.

They’ve rapidly released felons who violently attacked Capitol cops, canceled security details, excised Tuskegee Airmen from Air Force training syllabi, illegally fired all inspectors-general, encouraged [intimidated?} civil servants to take buyouts (to limit the government’s ability to tax or regulate corporations) but imposing the abortive” pause in paying moneys already committed.

It seems that the reaction of even Republican officeholders in states and cities caused that U-Turn, which so embarrassed the Trumpies that they denied it was a retreat at all. But don’t celebrate. The game plan is to distract with unconventional formations and pre-snap motion so’s defenders can’t cover everyone. Throw out so many appalling absurdities that more thoughtful and patriotic forces can’t fight em all.

Everyone wonders how and when many Trump voters will realize that he’s working against their interests? He represents the well-heeled corporations that are gouging and poisoning people. Government officials trying to protect us from them is somewhat inconvenient to their profit maximization. He promises lower grocery prices; but neither depriving farms of their largely immigrant work-forces nor imposing tariffs will reduce the price of eggs, nor will ignoring bird flu. He is their champion, but his various actions to weaken their access to medical care won’t make ‘em feel a whole lot better, nor will the polio Mr. Kennedy might subject their kids to. Trump yammers about job creation, but he’s trying to undo the jobs Biden and Congress quietly created through the Inflation Reduction Act. (He needs to cover the Biden smell.)

Will they see the connection? Or will he convince them that Joe Biden’s ghost is tinkering with the machinery, or Kamala has a sly finger on the scale? Will Musk’s Twitter continue bombarding them with enough pro-Trump propaganda to keep them quiet? Will eliminating all the watchdogs suggest he has plans to break laws – or just that he’s pruning the Deep State?

Beats me!

                                                      – 30 --

 

[The above column appeared today, Sunday, 2 February, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on its website, as well as on the KRWG 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 / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). ]

[ What’t going on is dangerous in an unprecedented way. And part of the plan is what my column points out, the great variety of the bad acts – as predicted by Steve Bannon years ago, when he spoke of flooding the zone.

The moment I sent in the column, Trumpian absurdities flooded in. Krish Patel, the proposed FBI head, scrambled to explain why saying he’d destroy the FBIwas not a problem; and our proposed new Fauci, Mr. Kennedy danced such weird gyrations around his dangerously goofy vax ideology that even the Louisiana Republican U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, a physician himself, confessed he was “struggling with your nomination.”

Since, top FBI officials are gone, and Musk operatives have full access to the federal system of payments, which was normally well-guarded information even within the government. They could cut off funding to a social program they disliked – or stop sending Fauci’s pension checks.

Meanwhile a tragic crash between a small airplane and a military helicopter killed scores of people near D.C. That’s a tragedy. Mr. Trump immediately insulted women and ethnic minortiies by blaming DEI! Under reporters’ questioning, he said sometimes brains could be a factor in air controllers’ work, implying disadvantaged folks’ brains were inferior, and complained about a slogan he said Biden had put up at the FAA, until another reporter said the slogan had been there all through Trump’s first Presidency.

Trump’s absolute lack of grace in trying to make a political point even before the bodies were recovered was no surprise. Nor was his lurching into a random lie, then trying to support it with remarks that were as stupid as they were racist.

Meanwhile, facts emerged that I suspect were irrelevant but had a lot fatter chance of being relevant than Mr. Trump’s babbling. Trump’s pal Elon Musk had essentially fired the head of the FAA; Trump had then dissolved the Airline Safety Council; and the combination of Trump’s “pause” in payments and “Fork in the Road” letter inviting federal employees to resign rattled folks, causing great chaos.

Here’s a possibly relevant fact that those facts probably didn’t cause: on the night of the crash, a staffing shortage had the air traffic controller doing the job of two controllers. I’m not blaming Trump for the crash. But I promise that if it had happened a week or two into Biden’s Presidency, Trump would have blamed Biden. And creating chaos and fear among federal employees, as Trump is doing, can’t be helpful.

Mr. Trump’s Presidency is something few of us deserve for our sins.

As Republican (or former Republican?) David Brooks wrote, “This was the week in which the Chinese made incredible gains in artificial intelligence and the Americans made incredible gains in human stupidity. I’m sorry, but I look at the Trump administration’s behavior over the last week and the only word that accurately describes it is: stupid.”

Meanwhile, top FBI personnel were reportedly told to resign or get fired. They left. Now Mr. Trump can ensure there’s no top expertise, independence or conscience to protect us from whatever January 6 sympathizer Kash Patel wants to do. Musk and friends also demanded sensitive information about methods of payment to retirees getting social security. No legitimate reason fot them to get that, and those officials resigned, too. What that says to folks who might want to speak up, is, realize that we can make up any kind of case we want and put you through legal hell and, if you depend on social security, you might need a lawyer to get the government to keep paying you. None of that sounds real subtle.]