A friend recommended Paula Moore’s Cricket in the Web: The 1949 Unsolved Murder that Unraveled Politics in New Mexico. It is a poorly conceived and executed history of a puzzling event. Facts and inferences are unfocused by any theory about who committed the crime and why. But one message is clear enough: the legal system of Las Cruces from top to bottom was incompetent and corrupt. Outsiders from northern New Mexico could not reform the underlying structural deficiencies of southern New Mexico folkways.
Another friend asked how I characterized the culture of Las Cruces. My answer: it lacks standards of excellence, aspires to nothing, and shrugs off mediocrity of any and all kinds. Still, do not misunderstand me. Most Las Cruceans are polite and pleasant. I wear my Vietnam veteran’s cap, not to prompt thanks, but to open opportunities to engage with friendly people. I am appalled that so much of the population suffers from persistent poverty and its consequences: poor (if any) housing, poor or inadequate nutrition, poor healthcare, and mediocre education.
On top of these conditions is a police force with no commitment to professionalism or public service. Officers have antagonistic attitudes and confrontational approaches to most, especially Hispanic, citizens. Knowing their commonplace abuses of those unlikely to protest and persist in their protests, I have campaigned against the violations falsely charged against me. If I can prevail in my long slog toward justice—retracted charges and expunged file—perhaps law enforcement and legal authorities will make reforms, and others will demand an end to abusive police and corrupt city lawyers.
The latest skirmish in my campaign is the most telling. A little history first. My 5 August 2019 complaint of false charges led to conflicted LCPD responses. On 5 February 2020, the IA investigator’s internal memorandum stated that “Mr. Hays’ warning notice had several violations marked to which there was no physical evidence or proof an actual violation had occurred.” Two weeks later, the IA chief’s report silently ignored my complaint about these violations and registered no decision about them. The warning notice states, a “receipt [of the notice] will be kept on file,” and there it sits.
A temporary diversion was the IA response to my 22 September 2019 blog on the possibility of antisemitism as the motive for the officer’s false charges and IA’s slow investigation. Notably, in my name but without my approval, the IA chief or investigator initiated a complaint of bias-based policing. After I learned the consequences of such a complaint, I demanded its withdrawal, and it was withdrawn.
Fast forward. When the Mayor vacillated on his promise that I might present my complaint to the police auditor, I sent OIR the relevant documents, to which it did not respond. City Council excluded my complaint from review by limiting complaints for review to those dated from 1 May 2021 or later. In response, on 2 June, I filed a new complaint of bias-based policing based on the five false charges of code violations. On 10 June, I emailed the Police Chief that I had had no response from IA and expected my complaint to be reported to the New Mexico Office of the Attorney General and included in the OIR police audit. He did not respond. On 23 June, I emailed him three, yes or no, and, if no, why, questions about an IA investigation of my complaint, a report to the NMOAG, and its inclusion in the police audit.
A same-day response came from the City Attorney, who did not directly answer my three questions. Instead, she attacked my complaint. With legal quibbles: “crimes,” not violations; warnings, not “charges”; etc. With a bizarrely worded, counterfactual denial: “The events as they occurred actually occurred. They were properly documented.” With a direct counterfactual denial: "There is no way to ‘purge’ your file because there is no file to ‘purge’.” Apparently, acting on her advice, the Police Chief ignores my complaint and does none of these things which police procedure, state law, and city policy require. By denying me due process of law, city officials treat me like a second-class citizen; by covering up a complaint about bias-based policing, they make this bias more obvious.
There is more. At the end of our two-day exchange, the City Attorney reached back to a first-day phrase for a second-day accusation of sexism, perhaps as a strategic move to counter my complaint about antisemitism with a libel about my sexism. Culturally ignorant of the meaning of an uncommon word used in an old phrase, she resorted to playing the gender card. I wrote, “I do not care I whether your knickers are in a twist about my non-lawyerly usage.” She wrote, “I suggest you refrain from treating me differently because I am a woman. Do not refer to my undergarments. I am sure you would not make such a comment to a man.” Her response should embarrass any feminist, male or female. (I make light of her desperate libel by joking that she had best explain to her husband how I acquired knowledge about her underwear. BTW, knickers are knee-length pants. They were worn by Dutch male settlers in New Amsterdam and since by men, notably professional athletes in golf, football, and baseball, and women up to the present. The term applied to female undergarments is a more recent innovation.)
On 29 June, she emailed me “that the City Council is informed that they should not respond to your email because that could create a possible rolling quorum.” She means “advised,” and her rationale is probably specious. In other words, she wants to make herself their only source of information about my complaint. She need not worry about the Mayor or Councilors contacting me. Only a few, and then rarely, have done so; they are likely pleased to shield themselves from responsibility “on the advice of counsel.”
All in all, a remarkable performance by the City Attorney, who indulges lawyerly quibbles to obscure the truth, lies in defiance of documented facts about violations on, and a file for, a warning notice, libels a citizen, and seeks to prevent elected officials from communicating with him on a strange reading of the law. All of this follows her office’s lies about an IPRA exception to me and the NMOAG. Honesty is a word not in this woman’s professional vocabulary or her professional inventory of capabilities. As the City Attorney, she thinks of herself as a trustee guarding her city’s interests—in the role, she has a personal as well as positional disposition to pugilism—but she forgets to think of herself first as an officer of the court. The difference between the two is likely to cause the city and her difficulty as I press on.
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