A year ago, when OIR presented its oral report to City Council, its spokesperson emphasized that citizen-police interactions were excellent. It turned out that OIR had not talked with any citizen who had interacted with the police. OIR presented as fact what was exclusively the LCPD’s self-assessment of its citizen-police interactions. By fronting for the LCPD, OIR diminished its credibility at the bargain-basement price of $75,000, for which Las Cruces got its whitewash of the LCPD.
This year, I skimmed, I did not scrutinize, OIR’s entire report, Fifth Semi-Annual Audit Report (March 2024), but I trust my sampling is reliable. In it, OIR admits its past whitewashing: “Our scope of work…incorporates elements of transparency” (p. 5). This addition to its scope of work means that OIR’s previous scope of work lacked “elements of transparency.” But many observers knew as much without being told so now.
A lack of specificity amounts to whitewashing. “The Internal Affairs investigator made effective use of the Force Cadre’s findings as a foundation for further inquiry and, ultimately, accountability for the involved officer” (p. 29). What “accountability” means is vague, and this vagueness leaves the public ignorant of what it means in a use-of-force situation. Was it a slap-on-the-wrist letter of reprimand or something more serious? It is hard to think that OIR is serious about any of those “elements of transparency” when it does not illuminate LCPD’s performance with specific and important details.
Hints of pro-police bias recur. For one example, in its discussion of 12 external complaints, OIR urges that “it is useful to set this in perspective: in this period, LCPD responded to 85,908 calls for service” (p. 15). OIR’s perspective is clear; diminish the importance of the problem by emphasizing the small number of complaints without regard for their significance—a common ploy in institutional defensiveness. OIR does not consider how many complaints may not have been made in a society with a culture more noted for acquiescence than assertion or action. The very low number of only 12 complaints out of nearly 86,000 service could suggest a far greater number.
For another example, OIR asserts that “it is true that body-worn camera recordings have had a profound evidentiary effect on the discipline process, and can sometimes definitively establish that a given allegation of misconduct did not occur” (p. 30). OIR presumably means that the misconduct, not the allegation, did not occur. It does not say that body cams can establish that the alleged misconduct did, in fact, occur. Any honest auditor would have stated that body cams can establish whether alleged misconduct did or did not occur. But OIR is so biased that it cannot make such a professionally balanced statement.
Count me as a skeptic of OIR’s work. I suspect that whitewashing police departments is its business model. After all, telling unwelcome truths might cost it a renewable contract, even for only $75,000. Obvious questions are, has ORI ever severely criticized a police department, and, if so, was it kept on the job as part of an effort to reform it?
And count me a skeptic of the City Council’s commitment to accountability and transparency when it persists in fobbing off such biased work as reflecting a serious concern about police performance. Incremental tinkering with OIR’s scope of work is not going to earn it the trust of citizens who do not trust the LCPD or whose daily encounters with the police are unsatisfactory. It simply allows Council members to feel safe a little while longer from having to deal with unprofessional policing and to feel good about themselves for presenting themselves as if they care about public safety.
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