Recent police killings and judicial abominations have spurred the formation of a number of groups, pre-existing or impromptu, to address police reform in Las Cruces. As I understand it, these groups include CAFé, Progressive Voters Alliance, Occupy, and, perhaps under the banner of the NAACP, a group of individuals including Bobbie Greene, Peter Goodman, and Earl Nissen, which I was invited to join but declined.
I attended one meeting each of two of these groups. The unfolding of one meeting led me to write a letter of withdrawal as soon as I got home. I wrote as follows:
I shall withdraw from [your organization’s] police reform effort. I should explain why. Given my different approach to problems of public policy, I think that I would interfere with your effort, which I nevertheless respect. There are many ways to skin a cat, but yours is not mine, as mine is not yours.
I think that police reform requires some agreement on what the problems are and what the solutions are. I doubt that everyone will or even can agree on them. In a democracy, a majority, not a unity, decides. To me, trying to reach consensus based on everyone understanding everyone else is not likely to be a productive way to go.
Whatever may be said about the police perspective on their performance, they are hired, trained, deployed, and paid as public servants. So how they perform or do not perform on duty, not whether they are fine people or not off-duty, is what needs to be addressed. Some of what they do on the job is constructive and non-controversial, but this work does not give rise to complaints or motivate the desire for police reform. The complaints arise in areas of public safety—traffic stops, domestic disputes, disturbed individuals, drug raids, etc., not to mention gratuitous insult and abuse—and it is the obligation of the police to understand and respond appropriately in those areas. It is not citizens who must understand the police; it is police who must understand citizens. When police ask for understanding they are asking for extenuation or making excuses.
What do I need to understand about the Valenzuela chokehold or the Baca shooting that would change my mind about the appropriateness of the officers' conduct? What do I need to know about an officer whom I flagged down who asked for my license and registration, and called in to records, before he said anything else? What do I need to know about an officer who gives me five false code violations? That his wife had a headache? That he was constipated?
When I was in Georgia in the summer of 1964, I and a few friends, some white, some black, integrated two restaurants. We did not know whether the police would be called or not. If they had been called, I very much doubt that we would or even could have had an understanding and agreeable discussion to resolve the issue. At about the same time, across the river in Alabama [Mississippi], three young men, two white (contemporary Cornellians of mine) and one black, registering voters were killed with police assistance. So my experience is that cum-ba-ya or let's-all-get-together does not get much done.
Which is not to say that I deprecate what you are trying to do, only that what you are trying to do is not my style of engaging issues like police reform.
The third paragraph of this letter says almost all: my emphasis on problems versus theirs on decision-making processes—on substance versus style.
But the biggest problem facing such well-meaning individuals in or out of groups will be the interwoven opposition of the powers-that-be. The Mayor, who shows himself increasing hostile to the down-and-out in need of social services and always militantly ultra-supportive of the police. The members of City Council, who have little or no knowledge of government, policy development and implementation, and, most of all, doubtful integrity and dubious priorities. Johanna Bencomo, who was for police reform, particularly a citizen review board, until the Mayor berated her for not respecting the police and she, too unliberated to defend herself—how dare you speak to me in that fashion, Mr. Mayor?—immediately abandoned her position and apologized that she, too, loves the police; and is trying to get back to the head of the line on police reform, where the microphone is. Kasandra Gandara, who colludes with the City Attorney, Jennifer Vega[-Brown?], who will manipulate her puppets, including City Manager Ifo Pili and Chief of Police, Miguel Dominguez, to find ways to say “yes, yes” and mean “no, no.”
I am not unduly harsh. These city officials do not want citizen participation in matters related to public safety. The city government’s webpage lists one standing committee on this topic: the “Public Safety Select Committee … shall be comprised of no more than three City Councilors [currently, Miyagishima, Gandara, and Abeyta], the City Manager or their designee, the LCPD Chief of Police, the LCFD Chief, The City Attorney, City staff designated by the City manager as needed and additional subject matter experts requested by the Committee as needed.” No citizens wanted. My suggestion: inclusion of a matching number of citizens on the Public Safety Select Committee selected by CAFé, PVA, and NAACP, and one each by the four non-member Councilors.
In these circumstances, short of revolution, a citizen review board is a virtual impossibility; short of transformation, even minor changes are highly improbable. Any adopted will be quietly allowed to lapse without enforcement. Goodman asked me for suggestions for smaller steps than a citizen review board, and I gave them; I also wrote, “No matter what the policy or procedure, accountability depends on the honesty and truthfulness not only of those being held accountable, but also of those holding others accountable.” As my experience with the LCPD about five phony charges demonstrates, honesty is in short supply on both sides of accountability as well as on the sidelines.
Reference my title: I hope that I am very, very wrong.
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