At its 22 May working session, the Las Cruces City Council focused on a citizen proposal for a Citizens Police Oversight Board and was attended by citizens concerned about police conduct. It was, as I had predicted in a previous blog, a sham of a good-faith inquiry into the merits of the proposal. Apparently, Council, which has done nothing in the past 4 years—not one policy or ordinance to improve the quality of policing and thereby lower the multi-million-dollar, self-insured costs of settlements—cannot be expected to do anything to disturb members over concerns about police threats to citizens or burdens on taxpayers. Keep that record in mind when Councilors Tessa Abeyta and Johana Bencomo run for re-election and Council Kasandra Gandara runs for mayor.
The first indication of a sham session was the half-hour entertainment of dancing children which later led the Mayor, mendacious and manipulative, Ken Miyagishima, to depart from the usual 3 minutes for a citizen’s comments, to stipulate only 1 minute for them. Otherwise, the nine or ten speakers would have had as much time as the dancers. Those who had longer comments were unable to make more than hurried remarks. While I can effectively deliver a well-crafted statement, I cannot do so on a spur-of-the-moment change requiring abridgment and made an awkward delivery of disjointed remarks. The Mayor, who has long and strongly opposed any board, made a mockery of citizen participation. Then, undoubtedly with legal assistance, Councilor Abeyta played the hostile prosecutor, aggressively interrogating her special target, Peter Goodman, who had made the case but was bullied by her tendentious quibbles. She made no effort to pretend to consider the proposal seriously. Other Councilors asked questions, some reasonable, some not. Most addressed routine administrative and organizational issues; one or two questioned how effective boards in other cities had been in reducing crime, as if that is what advisory boards so. Such was the quality of a Council session on citizens’ sensible effort to deal with the problem of poor policing.
Unfortunately for the cause, which I support, the panel members—Goodman, Bobbie Green, Earl Nissen—were not so well prepared as they should have been to answer factual questions of effectiveness, to address challenges about conformity to existing city and state laws, and to invoke other aspects of public good which a board can provide. Goodman did his lawyerly best to establish the framework of such a board and its compatibility with city and state legal requirements. Green was strong in stating the humane and moral grounds for police reform and support for a board; she added that, in her capacity as NAACP chapter president, she had written to the Department of Justice to investigate the Las Cruces Police Department. Nissen had an abundance of facts to support the proposal, but his presentation left everything to be desired. Yet any Council with even a scintilla of interest in improving the abysmal performance of the police would have encouraged the panel to return in the future to consider further the pro and cons of a board and its best configuration to serve Las Cruces.
In what follows, I offer an extended and revised version of my comments intended for that working session. Although much must be done to prevent the excessive use of force, much must also be done to improve the overall quality of policing, to educate the public about policing, to create trust between the community and the police, to increase citizen participation in the governance of police forces, and thereby to return public safety to democratic, not a police union’s autocratic, control. Such a board should be a public educator, ombudsman, and advocate for any citizen, whatever the complaint about any police conduct.
The need for police reform motivates the proposed Civilian Police Oversight Board. Although I generally support the idea of citizen oversight, I believe that this proposal gives too much attention to issues involving the police use of excessive force and too little to the culture which enables misconduct, dramatic or not, but too often damaging or deadly. Too many encounters between civilians and police offend, infuriate, and create distrust among citizens. Because police dishonesty plays a large part in charges, reports, and responses to citizen complaints, there will be no police reform until there is moral reform. Indeed, dishonesty is a shield for police misconduct large and small.
I undertook my case involving five charges of minor code violations because I knew that their falsity reflected force-wide dishonesty and wanted to expose it for correction. After years pursuing my case administratively, the Las Cruces legal system has proven itself dishonest from bottom to top: patrol officer, past head of Internal Affairs, past and present police chiefs, past City Attorney, City Manager, and City Council members. Their pervasive and persistent dishonesty mocks transparency and accountability.
One instance in blogs emailed to Council members and citizens illustrates my point. At a meeting with Manager Pili and Chief Dominguez—Councilor Bencomo and Mr. Peter Goodman attending by Zoom—, I showed, and Manager Pili agreed, that the five charges were false. He agreed that I deserved an apology and, at my specific request, not a bland statement about poor communications and hurt feelings. Saying that he wanted to be sure that the apology would satisfy me, he asked me to draft it for him. I did so, and, in reply, I got a bland statement about poor communications and hurt feelings. He must have had a good laugh at making me jump through hoops on the pretense that I would get the requested apology. His ruse trifled with honesty and showed contempt for truth, the law, and citizens. Chief Dominguez did not withdraw the false charges, and, later, then City Attorney Vega emailed him and me her flagrant lie that the charges were valid, even though Internal Affairs had found them baseless months earlier. No citizen should be treated as I was. I suspect that most citizens avoid complaints to avoid this kind of disrespectful and shabby treatment common in city government about police conduct.
Although informed about my case, Council members said or did nothing to address police dishonesty. Their indifference discredits them, specifically, my Councilor, Mayor Pro Tem Kasandra Gandara, who feigned concern about my case all the while informing City Attorney Vega about my strategy and tactics, none, by the way, intending litigation. Mayor Miyagishima, contrary to his promises to let me present my case to the police auditor (OIR), and, emphatically, Councilor Bencomo supported boundaries on cases for audit which excluded mine, and Council endorsed them. Council’s dishonesty in excluding this relevant information helped whitewash the police auditor’s report.
My case alone indicates why an independent Civilian Police Oversight Board is necessary as a first step to correcting the pervasive dishonesty of the Las Cruces legal system by receiving, analyzing, evaluating, and publicizing public safety information. At present, only such a board can provide an honest account of police conduct and promote transparency and accountability. Council support would be a step toward moral as well as police reform. Its non-support would perpetuate police dishonesty.
As then Deputy Police Chief Dominguez has testified, the police are not trusted. They are not trusted because they are out of control. Their misconduct ranges from insult to abuse to violence, often deadly; and to dismissive or dishonest responses to citizen complaints. Chief Dominguez’s biased editing of the body-cam footage of Amelia Baca’s killing justifies the anagram of the word “police”: “cop lie”—where my case began. It should have ended, if it had existed, before a Citizens Police Oversight Board.
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