The history of Las Cruces includes unsolved or unpunished murders implicating the police. Two notorious ones 75 years apart are the unsolved rape and murder of Ovida “Cricket” Coogler on 31 March 1949, and the unpunished murder of Sra. Amelia Baca on 16 April 2022. (See note 1 on my use of the word “murder.)
I attribute the status of the Baca murder as unpunished to the gap between City Council and the Las Cruces Police Department. As I noted in a previous blog, Council has no role in developing or approving the policies and procedures meant to guide LCPD operations. It neither conducts nor sponsors independent, unfettered investigations of significant events or emerging trends. Its contract terms and conditions have rendered its current police auditor, OIR, impotent and no longer credible. It gives the Police Chief a free hand when it comes to accountability and transparency.
That blog analyzed the long-held, privileged position of the LCPD, which is presumably accountable and perhaps transparent but to itself only. Its position raises several questions about the wisdom of the current structure of city government as it affects public safety. During their inquisition of the proponents of a civilian review board—my terminology, not theirs—, several Councilors questioned the vaguely defined relationships between the board, and the Council and the LCPD. In hindsight, their questions would carry more weight going forward if they had asked the same questions about the relationship between Council and the LCPD.
The Council funds the LCPD without any influence on anything other than staffing and salary levels, and facility and equipment requirements. Whether LCPD officers operate in a manner serving the public interest in public safety is a matter of indifference to its members, an indifference expressed rather remarkably callously. For example, not one member of Council commented at the time on Baca’s murder. No sympathy for the family and their loss. No outrage at the killing of yet another mentally distressed person. Later, no anger at yet another multi-million-dollar settlement paid for by the taxpayers—citizens and companies—of Las Cruces. What matters to them?
The city-manager form of government need not deny City Council the authority to review and approve LCPD policies and procedures, to assess the suitability of LCPD operations, and to oversee and investigate those operations and, if necessary, to direct its one employee, the City Manager, to make changes. (See note 2 for a potent way to encourage police reform by self-policing.) Indeed, the connection between Council and Manager is closer than that between the legislative and executive branches of the federal government. Yet Congress exercises oversight of the Administration by investigations into the conduct of its departments and agencies, and passes legislation to address deficiencies as well as advance initiatives. Since Council does not publicly supervise the LCPD, it does not do one of its important jobs, one not understood or acknowledged as such by the inexperienced majority of current Councilors.
Suspect is the clandestine relationship between Council and the LCPD, so hush-hush that some members of the Council do not know what other members serving on secret law enforcement committees know. Law enforcement issues remain closely held within the confines of the LCPD or these small committees of selected Council members and LCPD officers. These committees reflect back-room politics at its worst and contrary to the spirit, if not the letter, of the provisions of the New Mexico Open Meetings Act. (The names of these committees seem to have been recently removed from the city’s website.)
The secrecy surrounding law enforcement is a shield of misconduct and has a corrupting influence on LCPD operations and police conduct because they are sanctioned at the highest levels of city government. The shield enables a small number of elected officials and senior city employees, including the City Attorney, to minimize or eliminate accountability and transparency in major incidents, and to shape approaches to cases and settlements. This coterie of the privileged may justify their clandestine conduct by purporting to be acting in the public interest. But they cannot know the public interest because they keep a majority of Council members and all citizens ignorant of and apart from the decision-making process and the considerations—ethical, financial, legal, or political—involved. So citizens would no more believe them than they believe the LCPD. They do not reflect a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Last word: Council members who think themselves Progressives had better think again.
NOTE 1: Some may question whether Sra. Baca’s death is a murder, but the body-cam film makes it clear, and the delay in dealing with this incident suggests prosecutorial fears of even putting an officer on trial, much less sending him to jail for a long time, for murder. These fears have prolonged the investigation. The facts are: the task force finished its investigation on 21 June 2022; Dona Ana County District Attorney Gerald Byers said he would make his decision in a few days; instead, he referred the case to the New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas forty days later, on 31 July; NMAG Raul Torrez answered my certified letter through a subordinate on 2 June 2023 that “While we would like to be responsive to your request, the NMOAG is unable to comment on pending/active investigations.” What remains to investigate? We know the victim and the perpetrator, and have seen and heard the fatal moments of engagement. Is Torrez looking for some legal “spin” to exonerate the officer? I view Balderas’s and Torrez’s stall as an effort to keep this investigation open indefinitely, prevent disclosure of the facts and findings, and run out the clock on the statute of limitations on lesser charges. The law enforcement community likely will not put LCPD Officer Jared Cosper, returned to duty in November 2022, on trial for anything and likely will not explain the reasons for not doing so. (See note 3 on my concerns about non-disclosure.)
NOTE 2: Council funds the independent operation of the LCPD and pays for approved settlements required by officer misconduct. The LCPD has a moral and a professional incentive to reform, but neither of either nor both together are strong enough to effect reform. Although the “good cops” know who the “bad cops” are, their loyalty to the force defeats reform. One financial incentive to overcome such loyalty might be to make LCPD officers foot the bill for settlements. LCPD payments of settlements might be arranged in several ways. One would be to have union funds cover them. Another would be to deduct the aggregate amount of the previous year’s settlements from either the city’s contribution to the LCPD retirement fund or the next year’s projected budget for salaries. The latter arrangement may be the easiest to implement.
NOTE 3: My letter to Torrez made explicit my concerns about the non-disclosure of relevant information on a decision not to prosecute Officer Cosper. As I wrote,
I am told that, when cases are dropped, officials do not explain their decisions. In cases involving residents only, such a practice may be appropriate to protect the privacy of private citizens. But in cases involving police officers, the public has an interest in knowing the basis of those decisions. Without that knowledge, the public cannot know whether rationales based on current policies and practices are appropriate, especially as the law and the values underlying it evolve. Otherwise, the public can easily suspect a cover-up capitulating to the political potency of police forces throughout the state.
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