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.]

A public school is an a public accommodation which must treat us all equally.

Likely you’d have figured that that that statement was so obviously true that I’m an idiot for writing it.

But, in a sense, it only became true in New Mexico today (January 23), when the New Mexico Supreme Court unanimously decided the point, tossing out an erroneous 1981 decision that UNM was not a “public accommodation,” as that term is used in the New Mexico Human Rights Act.

The new case arose from a Halloween event in which their Advanced Placement English teacher allegedly cut three inches off one Native American girl’s braid and called another “a bloody Indian.” Albuquerque Public Schools argued, as lawyers will, that APS was not a public accommodation. The trial court bought that, and dismissed the case; but the Court of Appeal overruled that, and the Supreme Court agrees. (Lawyers will note that the Court of Appeals “distinguished” the 1981 UNM case, but the Supreme Court explicitly overruled it.)

I note the decision not merely for its irony, but for the distinction between our courts’,, and our state government’s, willingness to consider candidly our sorry history in such matters; and to be glad we do not live in Florida or Texas, and have some protection against the possible abuses at the hands of our federal government.

Said the court, “ The NMHRA’s protections against numerous forms of discrimination must be read against the backdrop of this state’s unfortunate history of race-based discrimination, including that history transpiring within our public schools.” Noting that our New Mexico Constitution provides for education for all children, and that, “Children of Spanish descent in the state of New Mexico shall never be denied the right and privilege of admission and attendance in the public schools . . . but shall forever enjoy perfect equality with other children in all public schools and educational institutions of the state.” For a lot of the 20^th Century, that simply was not true for Native American kids.

In judicial language, despite such constitutional protections, “New Mexico schools have been used to further efforts of assimilation and cultural erasure among Native American and Hispanic children” and that historians have written that our schools sought to force “assimilation through education ‘that intentionally sought to destroy their cultural ways of life.’”

Political point: can you imagine the governor or attorney-general of Florida or Texas writing that? Rather, we’re seeing directives that such things not even be spoken of in those states’ public schools.

Personal point: I’ve talked with a Navajo long-distance runner whose father taught himself long-distance running as a kid, racing home after escaping from the schools to which our state sent him to learn not to be Navajo any more. I also recall my friend Fred Johnson, a Dineh student here in 1970, whose required ten-minute film to pass Buddy Wanzer's filmmaking course was a very moving study of his daughter, juxtaposing the loud chaos of a morning here, and on a local schoolbus, with the quieter strains of a morning at home.

Justice Briana Zamora’s concurrence correctly notes that while Brown v Board of Education held in 1954 that the segregation of public schools based on race was unconstitutional, it was 41 years later, in 1995, that a federal court explicitly held that that applied to children on the Navajo Nation.

Another reason I’m glad I’m in New Mexico.

                                – 30 --

[ oops - thought i'd published this y/d, sunday, but apparently i didn't quite do that.]

[The above column appeared Sunday, 26 January, on the Las Cruces Sun-News 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/). ]

No News Is Good News If the Alternative Is Armed Insurrection

This week’s news included our first human bird-flu death and no violent effort to overthrow the government.

Outgoing VP Kamala Harris quietly presided over certification of Donald Trump’s election to the U.S. Presidency. That’s always a yawner. But, four years ago, a losing Presidential candidate orchestrated a plot to stay in office through fraud and chicanery, aided by a violent protest that killed five police officers and threatened the lives of congessfolk trying to do their constitutional job, including that losing candidate’s vice-president. Imagine trying to explain that to Dwight David Eisenhower! Then explaining that the guy was elected again.

He’ll reportedly pardon folks convicted of crimes in the failed coup effort. You elect a somewhat demented narcissist, then even violence against our country is acceptable if committed with admiration for the narcissist. An event almost unimaginable in U.S. history occurred, on national TV. The shifting sands of memory have already covered it.

This year, no violence. No threat of violence.

I can’t tell if the first human death from bird flu will someday loom large in memory, or be a trivia answer. (I’d bet on the latter, but for months I’ve washed my hands after filling bird-feeders.)

In 2016, the new president economized by abandoning the small office in charge of monitoring the world for possible pandemics, such as ebola and swine flu, and responding quickly. In 2019-20, that president denied that COVID-19 was any big deal. Perhaps coincidentally, the U.S., 4.24% of the world’s population, suffered by May 2020 28.6% of the global deaths from the pandemic, 103,700 out of 362,705. Maybe reporting anomalies contributed; and maybe some of the initial sanitizing recommendations proved excessive. But Mr. Trump was pooh-poohing masks, and advising folks to try weird remedies, and now wants to appoint an anti-vax nutcase to oversee such matters. Trump’s term ended in January, 2021. By April 2024, the death figures were just over seven million worldwide and 1,219,487 [a reasonable 5.7%] here.

The Salk vaccine stemmed the polio epidemic of seventy years ago. Polio has vanished. Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s lawyer has brought lawsuits seeking to undo approval, and even do a new placebo test – not vaccinating some kids, to see what happens. Sorry, but given 70 years’ scientific history, that just sounds dangerously goofy. Kennedy also helped undermine Samoan confidence in the measles vaccine, helping Samoa suffer a deadly measles outbreak.

In 2020, Kennedy said that much of the pandemic “feels very planned to me,” adding that “if you create these mechanisms for control, they become weapons of obedience for authoritarian regimes.” Jay Bhattacharya, Trump’s choice to heat the National Institute of Health, said in April 2020 that the pandemic would be less deadly than flu. FDA appointee Marty Makary said in February 2021 that COVID would be “mostly gone by April.” Their ideologies dominated their “scientific” pronouncements. Not ideal behavior by the folks who’ll decide how we handle the next big health problem. Or biological warfare against us.

Meanwhile Mr. Trump, like an Alzheimer's patient, grabs at everything he sees. His threat to snatch the Panama Canal and Greenland, for our security, undermines alliances. Refusing to rule out violence tells Xi and Putin that if they feel they need Taiwan or Ukraine, that’s cool. Even Trump’s own former National Security Advisor says that’s dumber than a fencepost.

Very few of my future Sunday columns will mention the White House. It’s too easy a target.

                                         – 30 –

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 12 January, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and 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/). ]

[In 2025, very few of my Sunday columns will discuss Mr. Trump. We have plenty of urgent issues locally worth discussing; and Washington is both too easy a target to be much fun [see above column] and a little fruitless, because folks mostly believe what they believe and ain’t listening.

However, a Facebook exchange today set me thinking on what’s maybe an odd course: Along with keeping an eye on Mr. Trump, and resisting excesses if and as we can, we should be grateful we are not him. Most of us, clearly including Joe Biden, grew up in families that taught us some basic stuff about loving and being loved, living our lives but considering others’ needs too, and basic decency. Mr. Trump was taught that it was a dog-eat-dog world, and one’s task was to make as much money as you could off anyone else you met, and you got laughed at if you didn’t. All his annoying traits, some trivial, such as cheating at golf and comically exaggerating crowd sizes, and humiliating anyone who disagrees with him, are indeed annoying; but each speaks eloquently of his need to do that sort of shit, and I can think of few people I know who would choose to be in Donald’s wounded mind if they could avoid it. It must be hell!

So, while maintaining compassion for all those he hurts and insults, save some for him. ]

New Mexico Supreme Court Confirms Localities Can't Outlaw Abortions

No big surprise here, but on 9January, as I watched all that wonderful snow float earthward, the New Mexico Supreme Court unanimously rendered a decision that’s important but also as obvious as the snow falling in the direction Newton would anticipate: that the vicious efforts by Hobbs, Clovis, Lea County, and Roosevelt County to outlaw abortions was illegal and ineffective. Despite a laundry list of goofy sounding rightwing “friends of the court,” the justices said that the ordinance, as it was intended to, conflicts with state law, and that the state statute controls. The court did not consider or decide the deeper question of the ordinance’s constitutionality, because there’s a basic procedure rule that if you don’t have to decide a constitutional question, because some other issue is sufficient to decide the case, you don’t look at or opine on the constitutional question.

The case was formally known as State ex rel. Torrez v Board of County Commissioners for Lea County, et al., Docket # S-1-SC-39742 (1/9/2025)

The ordinances, in the court’s words, “create blanket prohibitions on the mailing or receipt of any abortion-related instrumentality.” Those prohibitions, the court concluded, “plainly conflict with provisions of the Reproductive and Gender-Affirming Health Care Freedom Act (the Health Care Freedom Act or the Act), NMSA 1978, §§ 24-34-1 to -5 (2023)” and several other statutes.

Therefore the effort failed.

The court reviewed the history, starting with the 2022 US. Supreme Court decision in Hobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 597 U.S. 215, 360-61 (2022), overturning Roe v. Wade, 410 US. 113 (1973), and declaring the authority to regulate abortions a state issue. Today’s opinion noted the accuracy of the Hobbs dissenting justices’ prediction that Hobbs would encourage just such in-state battles as this one.

In response to Hobbs, New Mexico’s Legislature revisited the decades-old state criminal statute banning abortions unless deemed necessary to protect a woman from death or “serious and permanent bodily injury. In 2021 the Legislature repealed the old ban and its criminal penalties, removing legal bars to abortion in New Mexico. Further legislative and executive actions broadened access. Most notably, the the Health Care Freedom Act, stating New Mexico’s modern desire to protect women's’ rights to access reproductive health care in New Mexico, went into effect in June 2023.  It prohibits any public body, entity, or individual from interfering with access to reproductive or gender-affirming health care and imposes penalties for violations of the Act’s provisions. The two county commissions and the two city councils had willfully violated that law.

Thus, today's decision should come as no surprise.

However, it confirms the importance (disputed at the time) of formally rescinding the old law and enacting a fresh one, bringing a more modern and compassionate approach to the issue. 

                                         --  30 -- 

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/ .]