Obviously, they are. In 2022, Police Chief Miguel Dominguez expressed surprise that Officer Jared Gosper failed to use de-escalation techniques after, so he said (untruthfully, as usual), over 70 hours of such training when he shot and killed Sra. Amelia Baca shortly after arriving on the scene.
At the institutional level, LCPD officers become impervious to training because it is not taken seriously by either instructors or trainees. It is delivered perfunctorily and received indifferently. And conduct contrary to training is not disciplined. Gosper’s behavior leading to his killing of Sra. Baca was contrary to training, yet Gosper has never been charged for murder (or anything else, for that matter) and has long since been returned to duty. The lesson is clear; training does not work and does not matter.
At the individual level, LCPD officers are impervious to training for several reasons. First, they are not very smart; “dumb cop” is a redundant expression. Second, they are not well educated. Third, they are immature. A recent, desperate recruitment drive to fill LCPD ranks set the bar at age 19 and a high-school education. Most have had a high-school civics course, but police training stresses loyalty to their partner and the police force, not their oath to uphold state and federal constitutions. They know less and care less about the law and justice than a pig knows and cares about Sunday. As automobile insurance companies know, they are a very high risk until age 25 because they lack self-discipline and common sense. Yet these young people are given a uniform, a badge, and gun—and taught excuses to exonerate abuses: “I thought he had a gun.”
Training cannot compensate for these deficiencies. No students in school, they are no trainees in police academy. They resent training which requires thinking. They resent training which is perfunctorily presented and is not reinforced. They endure it and forget it. They, men and women alike, resist training which would restrain their conduct and reduce their swagger (for the men, their macho; for women, their efforts at compensation by emulating macho). The only lesson which they learn is loyalty to the blue; screw the civvies.
Consider the no-longer-recent 2021 incident involving Jonathan Strickland. Upon getting a complaint that he was armed, dangerous, and likely to resist arrest, some of LCPD’s finest went in pursuit, shoved his car to a stop, and fired about 90 bullets at it and some into him. Of course, as usual, they claimed that they “thought” Mr. Strickland had a gun; of course, as usual, he did not.
What “thought” did not occur to them was whether the complaint which they received was a valid one and not a flimsy or false one used to manipulate unthinking police to harm the person complained of. So they acted precipitously—they love the adrenaline rush of a chase—and they acted recklessly—they enjoy target practice on black men. I do not know how many officers were involved, but not one, regardless of rank, attempted—forget training; forget policy—to restrain this riot of LCPD officers.
Why? The answer is that stopping to think would minimize the opportunity to have fun being the law-and-order types thought necessary to protect the public regardless of the chances of making some citizens victims of their thoughtless propensity for violence.
No less thoughtless are elected officials who tolerate the dishonesty and misconduct of “trained” officers behaving badly. Since 2019, many of my blogs have detailed my experience with the law enforcement and legal communities about false charges of code violations. But my experience began with an episode like the one which led police to cripple Mr. Strickland.
Neighbors with malice called in two complaints: that I let my dog out to run loose and that I permit a build-up of smelly dog poop in my backyard. Officer Juan Valles, since departed for Alamogordo, never saw my dogs running loose, never saw or smelled any waste, and never rang my doorbell or otherwise tried to communicate with me. Still, he ticketed me not only for these two false code violations, but also for three more about defective paperwork despite city records to the contrary. The similarity: unthinking acceptance of two complaints and bias-based reactions.
If elected officials on City Council cared about the honesty and competence of police work—they do not; they allow police auditor OIR rely on police reports biased in their selection and one-sidedness,—they might have urged the City Manager and, through him, the Police Chief to question LCPD practices in response to calls about complaints or for assistance. Their indifference to honesty and competence has enabled and will continue to enable costly, if not criminal, police misconduct subsidized by millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded settlements. Thus, in the absence of “real police reform,” persistently opposed for four terms by Mayor Ken Miyagishima and long advocated without agenda or action by Councilor Johana Bencomo, I have been falsely charged, Mr. Livingston has been crippled, and Sra. Amelia Baca has been killed.
NOTE: The NAACP chapter meeting at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Las Cruces Universal-Unitarian Church (Saturday, 18 March, 10:00 am, 2000 South Solano Drive) will feature Mayor Miyagishima.
Some possible questions for the Mayor: why have police reform tweaks from the early years of his tenure had no noticeable effect; why does he oppose police reform; why does he oppose a citizens’ review board; and why, in view of many notorious cases recently, does he insist that only one reform can be considered at a time; and, finally, why has neither he nor the City Manager announced and explained the departure of the City Attorney, as departures of senior officials are usually announced and explained.
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