In a TV commercial for Mennen aftershave, a man in pajamas scans his morning beard in the bathroom mirror. Two hands not his slap his face—to which wake-up he says, “Thanks. I needed that.” Las Cruces citizens have neither mirror to see nor hands to wake themselves. They are what they tolerate. Let a gender, racial, or religious slur pass without protest, and they share in the expression of bigotry. Ignore incompetence, failed effort, and wasted money and resources, and they get more of the same. Do nothing to reform police abuses—let City Council cover them up with an audit rigged to exclude pertinent cases—, and they enable their perpetuation. As John Stuart Mill, not Edmund Burke, said, “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” (PC correction: women, too.)
Let me give an example from a televised working session of the City Council several months ago. When police reform was a topic of discussion, Councilor Johana Bencomo spoke in support of a civilian police review board, and Mayor Ken Miyagishima scolded her. Sadly, her response was to flinch and fall in line, not to rebuke him for demeaning and bullying her, and stick to her guns. Yet I make some allowance for her shock at the Mayor’s ugly public behavior. I make none for the other Councilors—women: Gandara, Stuve, Flores; men: Sorg, Vasquez—who stayed silent, too weak or unprincipled to muster support of a sister or a colleague. The “silent treatment” in these Councilors’ response to the Mayor’s shabbiness is typical of moral weaklings.
City Council is no better at setting policy and supervising its one employee, the City Manager, to ensure its enforcement in the city government under his control. Let me give an example from environmental policy, much ballyhooed by Councilors. Public Works projects ignore settled policy to avoid undue environmental damages. A dozen years ago, PW planned to clear-cut the Brown Farm floodplain—which meant cutting down a half dozen mature trees. As work began, I called the Mayor, he promised to check, and PW told him that the work was only to dredge two channels (yes, that botch-up). When he reported this reply, I said that PW had lied to him and invited him to see for himself. He came to my house, saw the work, realized that PW had lied to him, and called to have the work halted. Fast forward to today. PW began its fiasco by again starting to clear-cut the site. Neighbors and I asked it to stop; PW measured ground levels, found that avoiding the trees would not cause pooling or divert stormwater, and spared the trees. Councilors are dishonest in setting environmental policy for which it takes credit but does not ensure that its City Manager enforces it on departments.
Disrespect and dishonesty result from government disjointed and dysfunctional. Council passes policy, which may or may not go into effect. The City Manager may or may not direct the affected departments to comply with it. Department Directors—PW for one—may or may not do so. In such a government, mediocrity or worse flourishes unfettered by approved policy. When Council policy says one thing and city employees do another, standard operating procedure is to cover up disparities and damage, with dishonesty.
The epitome of dishonesty is the spokesman for transparency and accountability in policing Chief of Police Miguel Dominguez. His “Eight Can’t Wait” testimony to City Council that officers are human and make mistakes, but that the department admits them is a testimonial to unabashed cynicism. For, in my case and, I assume, others, he has broken promises and refused to admit mistakes.
With such leadership, police officers are equally dishonest, with Internal Affairs tasked to devise excuses, however contorted, for conduct contrary to legal principle or LCPD policy. In a redacted portion of an Internal Affairs memorandum, Officer Juan Valles denies antisemitism, and officers in the IA and LCPD chains of command accepted his denial: just his luck to be the Animal Control Officer responding to citizen complaints at a home prominently displaying a Star of David. He implies that any other ACO—that is, all other ACOs—would have cited me, as he did, for five violations without evidence or proof of their actual occurrence, as that IA memorandum admits. He implies that all LCPD officers are liars. Many believe so.
The shameless dishonesty reaches the Las Cruces Law Office. City Attorney Jennifer Vega-Brown recently wrote, notwithstanding the IA memorandum, that all five violations actually occurred and are “well documented.” She can get no more dishonest than by denying the truth admitted by LCPD investigators and refusing to defend her denial. Her lie has a purpose: to give City Council and the LCPD cover to take legally dubious actions “on the advice of counsel.” In a display of power to protect herself, she advised Council not to respond to a blog critical of her. Though knowing better, all members, accepted her spurious claim that doing so would risk a rolling quorum (meant to reach decisions in secret). In line with their tolerance of dishonesty, they obeyed her command.
After several blogs on PW incompetence and waste in the past decade, and after nearly two dozen blogs on LCPD and Law Office misconduct and dishonesty in the past two years, silence or somnambulance prevail. The local media—The Bulletin, The Sun-News, KRWG, KTAL—and their commentators have tolerated all of it. You, my readers, have, with one exception, then just once, to warn me of police retaliation, also tolerated all of it. So, if you are what you tolerate, what are you?
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