This “law-and-order” guy believes that no law enforcement department or agency is above criticism for bad polices, practices, or conduct. If ignorance, indifference, denial, or defiance are indications, authorities in Las Cruces—City Council, Police Department, and Law Office—disagree. But, then, I am a Type-A soul in a Type-B society.
I had no idea that exposing professional deficiencies in the LCPD because of an officer’s false, fact-free, or fabricated allegations of minor code violations would expose political deficiencies in Council and legal deficiencies in the Law Office. I expected LCPD resentment but not Council inaction or Law Office obstruction; after all, public safety is a primary government function. I certainly did not expect Mayor Miyagishima’s insulting rebuke of Councilor Bencomo that she might make “false” criticisms of the LCPD.
No Councilor has used information about LCPD misconduct detailed in my blogs since August 2019 to question an LCPD officer when the opportunity arose. In a June working session on Eight Can’t Wait proposals, Deputy Police Chief Dominguez said that many people distrust the LCPD—no Councilor asked why—and that the LCPD admits its mistakes—no Councilor asked for an instance, not necessarily mine. When I wrote him about my case in view of these statements, he did not reply. When I made an IPRA request for case-related documents, the Law Office, headed by City Attorney Vega-Brown, released innocuous ones and redacted or withheld four sensitive ones. When a citizen wrote the Mayor and Councilors to urge that they address my case and right LCPD wrongs, not one responded.
Council, instead of admitting and addressing government mistakes, considers only concerns, issues, and problems to avoid personal accountability. It sets the example of stonewalling citizens with complaints about police conduct; the LCPD and the Law Office follow it. This stonewalling reinforces the Law Office’s combative risk-management approach to citizens’ cases or complaints. Its responses to my IPRA request for complaint-related documents seem intended to protect Council and the LCPD from embarrassment or worse.
Item one: The LCPD suppressed confirmation of my complaint about those faulty allegations in two redacted documents, both internal memorandums to Police Chief Gallagher. IA Sgt. Mullen’s 5 February states, “Mr. Hays’ warning notice had several violations marked to which there was no physical evidence or proof an actual violation had occurred.” But IA Lt. Kinney’s 19 February letter closing my complaint omits this finding; the LCPD refused to admit that it was wrong and I was right. (Take note, Chief Dominguez.)
Item two, a speculation: The Law Office withholds two documents with distribution so sensitive that it refuses even to identify writers, recipients, topics, or dates—information not exempted from IPRA. A likely recipient, someone outside the chain of command for concurrence with LCPD’s responses to my complaint, is the Mayor.
This cover-up may be worse than the crime. I complained about the Law Office’s IPRA violations to the New Mexico Office of the Attorney General. After its investigation, the NMOAG emailed a 2 December six-page legal opinion, with a two-paragraph conclusion:
Because we have remaining concerns about the City’s responses to Mr. Hays’ requests dated March 5, 2020 and April 9, 2020, we strongly recommend that it reconsider both requests so as to ensure that it has fully complied with IPRA [emphasis added]. The City should again scrutinize the two records it withheld and the two records it redacted. Most importantly, these records should only be redacted (or withheld) to the limited extent they contain matters of opinion, as we have previously explained. And, after conducting this review, if the City maintains that it has properly withheld those two records in their entirety, it should reevaluate whether they may be redacted so as to provide Mr. Hays with the records’ “date, topic, author, and audience.” If this is not possible, the City could, in the interest of transparency, nevertheless provide the requested information to Mr. Hays notwithstanding the fact that it is not legally obligated to do so.
For your reference, a copy of the IPRA Guide is available on the website of the Office of the Attorney General www.nmag.gov [emphasis added]. If you have any questions regarding this determination or IPRA in general, please let me know.
That is, start over and get smart. Clearly, the Law Office displayed either incompetence in not comprehending the law or contempt in defying it—and represented Las Cruces government not even up to its usual level of mediocrity.
The Law Office has neither reconsidered the NMOAG opinion nor replied to my 21 December letter of inquiry about its intentions: compliance or court. I expected its discourtesy and confrontation in its belief that I am bluffing. I am not. I have a strong case made stronger by a strong NMOAG opinion. The Law Office runs big risks of an unfavorable decision, expensive penalties, and the very disclosures which it wants to prevent. The Mayor and Councilors, the Police Chief, and the City Attorney may prefer pay-outs for incompetence and dishonesty to reforms of police and law operations. If so, their pieties about reforms serve as a PR front comforting others who also talk reform and also do not take it seriously. Meanwhile, I shall keep calm and carry on.
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