LAS CRUCES CANNOT AFFORD THIS CITY COUNCIL

       In many blogs over many years, I criticized City Council for its failure to undertake police reforms and the LCPD for incompetence and corruption.  I pointed out the costs both in lives lost or shattered and in costly settlements which reduced funds for better purposes.

The dereliction of duty by City Council and the Las Cruces Police Department in just three cases in only the past 4 years has cost three lives lost to killings and $29,250,000 in settlements.  Since the city self-insures, the cost per capita is nearly $300.  The costs are still higher because these settlements are not the only ones of cases involving personal injury and property damage reflecting Council indifference and resulting from LCPD misconduct.

 

The history of these three cases is instructive.  In February 2020, LCPD Officer Christopher Smelser killed Antonio Valenzuela.  Although charges against Smelser were dismissed, the city paid $6,500,000 to his estate to settle all claims against the city and its employees.  After the payout, Sam Bregman, Valenzuela’s attorney, opined that the size of the settlement would make it cost-prohibitive for the LCPD to be involved in future wrongful lawsuits.”  How wrong he was, in part because the city, not the LCPD, pays the costs of settlements with taxpayers’ funds; in part because a more outrageous killing and a three-times-bigger settlement awaited.

 

On 16 April 2022, LCPD Officer Jared Cosper killed Amelia Baca.  Although New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torres declined to charge him after out-of-state expert Steve Ijames argued self-defense and thereby cleared the killer and lowered the settlement, the city still paid $2,750,000 to her estate to settle all claims against the city and its employees.

 

On 3 October 2023, LCPD Officer Felipe Hernandez killed Teresa Gomez.  This killing was so egregious that the the City of Las Cruces reached a settlement with the estate of Teresa Gomez in its wrongful death lawsuit for $20,000,000.  “The settlement is the largest in the city’s history and is believed to be the largest in state history.”  Defendants were Hernandez, the city, the LCPD, Police Chief Jeremy Story, Deputy Police Chief Sean Mullen, and former Police Chief Miguel Dominguez.  The city’s news release admits no wrongdoing in expressing its regrets.  “This settlement should be understood as a statement of the city’s profound feeling of loss for the death of Gomez and of the city’s condolences to her family.”  Such compassion; such generosity—my hind part.  The city knew that the plaintiffs had a case threatening it with losses of many millions more.  Questions: will the city feel the same way about every future victim of a cop-killing; compensate every victim’s family similarly; and, if not, why not?  Surely, the circumstances of the killing do not determine the city’s feelings of loss and condolence.  (Information and quotations come from the 22 November 2024 Bulletin and Sun-News accounts and their hyperlinks.)

 

All three victims—one man, two women—were Hispanic; none was aggressive and posed no threat to the officers.  All three killings were preceded by officers’ unrestrained profanity and uncontrolled anger.  I do not know whether Smelser’s or Cosper’s jackets included prior incidents of excessive use of force, but Hernandez’s jacket does.  Which means that the LCPD has evidence of officers’ propensities to violence yet does nothing to get them effective anger-management therapy, to transfer them to desk jobs, or to offer out-counseling and support for another career.  That is, the LCPD makes no use of this information to protect the public and operates by hoping for the best with its fingers crossed and press releases at hand.

 

Bregman may have been optimistic about future LCPD conduct because the Valenzuela settlement required the LCPD to adopt numerous policies, including:

• Banning all forms of chokeholds
• Requiring officers to intervene if they witness an "unconstitutional use of force" by another officer
• Bi-annual de-escalation training for every officer
• Bi-annual training in empathy and racial bias for every officer
• Requiring all uses of force to be reported, investigated and stored under the length of time required by the New Mexico Retention of Records Act
• A red flag warning system to track use of force
• Requiring the Las Cruces Police Department to report all uses of force to the Las Cruces City Council every six month[s]
• Requiring officers to have a mental health exam on an annual basis with a licensed psychiatrist”

As far as I know, it adopted or implemented none of these policies, and City Council, though it discussed police reforms, proposed none.

 

These failures reflect government officials’ opposition to police reforms.  City Council and its secret Public Safety Select Committee opposed a citizens' police oversight board.  During a work session to consider a citizens' police oversight board, Councilor Johana Bencomo decried the lawyers’ draft as “superficial” but declared herself for “real police reform” (emphasis hers).  Yet neither before nor after has she proposed any reform.  She is not alone; no member of City Council since 2020 has proposed any police reform.  (I omit anything about a contract with OIR, a police auditor hired to whitewash the LCPD.)  I infer that Council members, individually or collectively, do not much care about the loss of human life or the waste of public funds because of inept LCPD leadership and out-of-control police officers.

 

The city needs new leadership.  I recommend that concerned citizens, especially those leading civic organizations, come together to form a non-partisan citizens’ group for good government, especially in matters of public safety.  The group should operate independently of Council, which is failing in this and other important matters of public concern.  It should use information obtained through IPRA.  It should hold meetings open to the public to listen to its concerns, identify issues, and report findings.  It should encourage candidates for Council with integrity; the courage to speak truth to power, including the mayor and fellow councilors, and the public; and a determination to address major problems and ameliorate or solve them as part of a commitment to public service.

 

Police reform should be the first item on the group’s agenda.  Initial work should consider two tasks.  One is a review of all LCPD policies.  These are proposed by the police chief and approved by the city manager, without any review by City Council.  It is likely that some important policies endanger people, do not serve the public interest, do not reflect community values, or violate legal principles.  The other is a review of all LCPD training materials.  For instance, the repeated failures of de-escalation training means that deficient police training is responsible for many LCPD failures (also desperate hiring of teenagers to fill up slots in a demoralized force).

 

Las Cruces cannot afford this City Council because its failures to address major problems waste funds which could better serve other public functions.  This Council disgraced itself by asking and securing about $11,000,000 per year in GRT taxes for unspecified improvements, then squandered $20,000,000 in settlement costs of another police killing, the third in four years.  The public should demand that its members ship out because it is long since past time for them to have shaped up.  Oliver Cromwell’s words apply: “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing.  Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.”

CITY COUNCIL CANNOT SOLVE BIG PROBLEMS, BUT IT CAN MEDDLE IN PRIVATE DECISIONS

      City Council has yet to solve the big problems of domestic violence, homelessness, panhandling, shoplifting, and vandalism even though its secret Public Safety Select Committee addressed them for three years.  Ducking its failures, Mayor Eric Enriquez has refused to affirm or deny its existence in response to my two inquiries.  Meanwhile, the city is waiting with bated breath for Councilor Bencomo to propose “real police reform.”  But Council, having dealt with the shopping cart crisis, now turns to the critical problem of animal control.

According to Justin Garcia’s account in the Las Cruces Bulletin (18 Nov), “The city of Las Cruces will consider revising its animal control laws.”  In a work session, the city considered doing so.  Among them, one provision would limit declawing and punish residents found guilty of a first-time violation of it (a second violation would prohibit the owner from pet, not just cat, ownership).

 

I understand that people have strong opinions about declawing cats.  Some think that declawing is painful, though no more so than any other veterinarian surgery; is cruel because it hampers their flights from dogs or coyotes, on the erroneous presumption that declawed cats cannot climb trees; and seriously disadvantages them in fights with other, often feral, cats.  I suspect that their response adds an excess of sentimentality to the sincerity and strength of their opinions, which are, however, no guide to truth.

 

In light of my experience with cats, I question whether people who oppose declawing cats have experience with declawed cats.  (I speak of declawing front feet only; back feet must remain intact for climbing and defense).  My first wife and I had about a dozen cats at one time or another, several at one time.  None of them damaged furniture with scratching or wounded each other in tussles; we declawed none of them.  The woman who became my second wife had only one cat, but he had made her couch look like a dish of spaghetti without the meatballs and tomato sauce.  We agreed that I would get Joplin declawed before she moved in with me.  He was just fine afterwards and recovered nicely atop my computer desk, from which height he met and befriended my three large dogs.  When it came time for him to go outside (he had lived only in an apartment), he had no trouble climbing the dogwoods and fruit trees, and catching the birds, in our yard and, later, after we moved west, lizards, mice, and gophers in the field behind our house.

 

Given indications of damage to be done, I had a second cat, Edgar, declawed; again, no problems.  When I got a third cat, Cleo, a feisty calico, I did not initially get her declawed.  Edgar and she became best of friends, but their tussles resulted in wounds to Edgar’s face and neck.  Several veterinarian bills later, I incurred another for declawing Cleo; again, no problem.  Yet even declawed, Cleo is a terror when aroused.  She did not hesitate to attack and drive away three 70- or 80-pound family dogs when they annoyed her during some rough-housing; they learned to respect her space.  Years later, when I brought a new dog home from the pound, she promptly and, as it turned out, rightly attacked her.  She sensed that she was a cat-killer, scared her into retreat, and thus persuaded me to return her.  She quickly put the substitute in her place.  The coyote who thinks to make a meal of her will be in for one big surprise.

 

The point of relating my cat-declawing experiences is to show that the decision whether to declaw a cat depends on the proclivities of the cat, whether it tears curtains or upholstery, or whether it wounds other household cats in tussles with them.  An ordinance prohibiting declawing cats cannot be suitable for all situations and prevents owners from basing decisions on their circumstances and concerns.

 

I see this provision in a larger context.  Governments at all levels too often meddle in the private lives of citizens, even when no public good is served.  It shows that City Council lacks members sensitive to the appropriate, respective roles and responsibilities of government and citizens.  I would bet that councilors supporting this intrusive provision limiting or outlawing declawing cats object strenuously to government telling women what they can or cannot do with their bodies, and when.  Of course, an ordinance restricting or curtailing declawing cats is far from laws restricting or curtailing abortions, but the principle underlying both is the same: government intrusion into private lives and infringement of citizens’ freedom to make decisions which do not involve cruelty to other living beings, do not affect other citizens, and otherwise have no public consequences.  It is never time for governments and do-gooders to meddle in the private lives of citizens.  It is time for City Council to try to solve the big problems which affect the quality of life in Las Cruces.

REFLECTIONS ON THE 2024 ELECTION AND RESOLUTIONS FOR THE AFTERMATH

       Tuesday, November 5^th, 1605, is the date of the Gunpowder Plot, a Catholic attempt to blow up the House of Parliament in opposition to James I.  Tuesday, November 5^th, 2024, is the date of Trump’s successful attempt to win the presidency and restructure the American political system.   Like millions, I am stunned by this outcome, the more so because of my predictions of a Harris win and a “blue wave.”  I am among many of the worst of political prognosticators.  My only consolation is not that I had much company, but that I had a higher, though obviously now mistaken, opinion of the present majority of American voters.  I do not adhere to the pieties in response to political ugliness: “this is not who we are” and “there is no place in this country for [whatever is ugly]).  The results of the 2024 election are who we are at this time and in this place—at least for now. 

That voting majority has re-elected as president someone who is no mystery to them, but is a known politician who by any historical standard of previous presidents is unworthy of the office and a danger not only to democracy, but also to the safety and success of the country.  That voting majority has also elected a vice president not qualified to assume the office of the presidency—itself a fact suggesting similar dangers to the country.  In several states, that majority elected senators similar in character and convictions to those of the president- and vice-president-elect.

 

The nagging question must be how this outcome at a time when the country is enjoying peace and prosperity is possible.  Some part of the answer reflects the misogyny, racism, and xenophobia of many Americans who do not believe in the country’s most basic political principle, that all people are created equal.  This disbelief will be the cause of political mischief.  But bigotry is not the only reason for Trump’s victory, and it does not apply to many Trump voters.  Democrats will not help themselves analyze their defeat by blaming Trump voters as bigots; such an analysis assumes their own moral supremacy, blames segments of the electorate, and offers no solution other than waiting for the Second Coming, when bigotry will be no more.

 

Nor will Democrats help themselves analyze their defeat by giving undue attention to Kamala Harris and her campaign.  Whatever else may be said about her, she showed herself, by the sharpest of contrasts to her opponent, to be competent, compassionate, decent, and steady.  On the basis of character alone, the preference of a majority of voters for her opponent says more about them than her—about which no more need be said.  She ran a remarkably good campaign, but in the rush to develop and execute it, she took no time to address the flaws in it.  Haste made waste.  She did not try at the outset to explain the changes in her positions on important issues and thus put them behind her; they remained liabilities.  She also did not try to define her differences from Joe Biden—a difficult job for any succeeding vice president.  Like Hubert Humphry in 1968, who was slow and vague in separating himself from Lyndon Johnson’s conduct of the Vietnam War, she was slow and vague in separating herself from Joe Biden’s position on the Israel-Hamas conflict.  Both lost.

 

But these considerations are relatively minor ones compared to her inheritance of problems in Democratic and especially Progressive positions contested in America’s culture wars.  At about the same time as Republicans since Goldwater in 1964 began veering to the right, with an emphasis on whiteness and Christianity, Democrats since the Free Speech Movement in the same year began veering to the left, with an emphasis on social justice.  Responsive to the issues, first of the Civil Rights Movement, then the women’s liberation movement, Democrats increasingly stressed issues initially of multiculturalism, more recently, of anything or everything meant by “woke,” diversity, inclusion, equality, and, underlying the latter three, identity, with gender issues having special salience.  The moral overtones of these issues have given Democrats and especially Progressives virtue-signaling postures implying superiority to those who have not shared their attitudes and beliefs, and have led to government policies and programs which they have perceived as foisted on them.  The results: perceptions that Democrats and Progressives represent elites, who condescend to everyone else, and resentment.  Their approval and encouragement of Trump’s vulgarity, his rhetoric of violence, and his violations of norms, traditions, and laws have expressed their resentment.  Trump has been the hero who struggles and suffers for them; the more he has been “fact-checked,” prosecuted, and vilified by the elites, the more he has secured their love and loyalty.  (Parallels between Trump and Jesus are no accident.)  Democrats and Progressives have not understood this dynamic or its origins in responses to their postures, policies, and positions.

 

The other side of this emphasis on issues of “woke,” DEI, and identity has been the relative indifference to the issues which have troubled many Americans regardless of their political affiliation or orientation: the economy (inflation) and immigration as well as abortion and even climate change.  (A notable omission by both Republicans and Democrats: education.  Neither candidate had one word to say on this subject, even though the deterioration of K-12 education and beyond is the kind of internal rot which undermines societies and polities.)  Trump promised simple, unrealistic solutions; Harris offered correctives, perceived as more attacks on Trump, but not explanations, and her alternatives did not address kitchen-table concerns.  For example: Democrats addressed the economy by touting the size and growth of the GDP and the heights achieved by the stock market—all well and good, but they have not addressed the price of a dozen eggs or a gallon of gasoline.  This refusal to engage citizens, perceived or real, has been seen as more elitist indifference or aloofness.

 

Kamala Harris did not initiate such a flawed relationship with the electorate; it was her inheritance as a Democrat, and it is a continuing legacy which burdens the Democratic Party.  The response to defeat in this recent election should be soul-searching, not finger pointing.  I suggest efforts to rediscover or redefine a Democratic identity and to re-establish responsive relationships with the demos.  Harris talked about being the president of all Americans, but she never visited Kansas.  So one obvious way to achieve these objectives would be for elected and party officials to visit all the states, red as well as blue, on a regular basis, not just the “swing states” when the party wants to harvest votes in election campaigns.  These officials should question local citizens about their lives and talk with, not to, them about their concerns.  At the same time, Democrats should not abandon their principles in order to appeal or pander to those who voted against them—the situation is too grave to play politics as usual.  Instead, they should affirm American principles and Democratic beliefs, and, for the immediate future, operate as a loyal opposition so that they are creditable and credible when this administration fails the country and needs their re-invigorated leadership to recover.

EXPLAINING TRUMP'S ELECTION (IF IT HAPPENS)

 “The most important election of our times”—how many times have we heard that phrase every four years?  But this election, the phrase applies because, in no previous election for a century-and-a-half, has the issue of the survival of democracy arisen. 

As I write this blog less than a week before Election Day, the race between Democratic Vice-President Kamala Harris (and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz) and Republican former president Donald Trump (and Ohio Senator James “JD” Vance) appears to be very close in both the popular vote and the Electoral College vote.  (I still stand by my prediction of a “Blue Wave,” a November surprise, but I admit that it looks shaky.)  Once Harris replaced President Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket, the expectation was that she would dramatically improve Democratic chances of winning the presidency.  After the debate between Harris and Trump established her strengths and his weaknesses as a candidate, the expectation was that she would pull well ahead of him.  For Harris and Walz are not only strongly supported by their party, but also winning some support from the Republican party.  Indeed, former elected officials like Liz Cheney and her father Dick Cheney; senior flag officers, including those who have worked with Trump; and former White House personnel have vigorously criticized his fitness for office.  Nevertheless, at best, she has pulled even with him; neither candidate has achieved a lead in the national polls greater than the margin or error, and the same is true in the seven “swing states.”

 

Throughout the campaign, Harris has been cogent, compelling, and compassionate in her appeals to all Americans; Trump has been confused, erratic, insulting, and hateful in his appeals to his base of Christian nationalists, Catholic and evangelical fundamentalists, and other MAGA followers.  She has acted with civility and decency; he has defied decorum and indulged vulgarity.  She has “stayed on message” about, among others, abortion rights, a thriving economy, reduced undocumented immigration and crime, and moderately progressive taxes, with an emphasis on opportunities for the middle class.  He has aired his grievances about voting fraud, the 2020 “stolen election,” and politically trumped up civil and criminal charges; wavered on abortion; babbled about climate change; and stressed racist claims of uncontrolled immigration and immigrant crime as part of his more general view of America in decline (as a “garbage can”).  They also differ greatly on policies about NATO, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Israel’s military operations in Gaza and Lebanon, health care, gun control, and climate change.  The candidates and their policies could hardly be more different.

 

The same is true of their attitudes toward the rule of law, constitutional government, the operations of government, the agencies and people who make government work.  Remarkably, although the president-elect, in taking the oath of office, must pledge to protect and preserve the Constitution, Trump has said that he may need to dispense with regulations, laws, and even the Constitution.  (Presumably, in view of a recent Roberts Supreme Court decision, dispensing with them might be “official acts.”)

 

Given such stark contrasts, the question is how a close election is possible.  Given the early expectations for Harris to surpass Trump, the question becomes what has restrained Harris and sustained Trump in the polls.  Since Harris is well qualified by education, experience, and personality, racial and gender bigotry must play a role in retarding her ascent.  Also geographical bigotry; San Francisco, where she worked, is a by-word for uninhibited and untraditional political policies.  Trump is the antithesis of a conventional political candidate.  He is ignorant and uncurious (“unserious,” as Harris has called him), dishonest, erratic, impulsive, narcissistic, uncouth, and charged with or guilty of many and diverse civil and criminal offenses.  Bottom line: Harris is handicapped despite her assets; Trump succeeds because of his liabilities.

 

I explain this “Trump paradox” as a function of the discontents prominent in populations conservative in politics or religion.  I address religious discontents first since it is more easily understood.  Certain religious conservatives—many, but not all, evangelical fundamentalists and Catholics—are inherently imperialistic; they want religion predominant in society.  Short of controlling influence, they are frustrated, angry, and disposed to set aside inconvenient considerations of manners, morals, or religious tenets to acquire it.  Trump has courted these religious conservatives, and his appointment of three Supreme Court justices who fulfilled their promise to overturn Roe v. Wade has secured their loyalty to him and support for his candidacy.

 

The political discontents are more varied.  Some express discontent with the economy, despite its robust performance since the end of covid.  Or with levels of immigration or crime, both of which have been in decline for many months.  Or with various social policies, many of which do not affect them personally: LGBTQ+ issues, abortion, and contraception, with inter-racial marriage on the back burner.  The disregard of the facts and the disparity between their lives as lived and these political positions point to the factor which I believe matters most in this election, namely, the resentment felt by Trump supporters who believe that elites—bi-coastal, college-educated, professional or academic—scorn them.  (A special subset is the “incels,” horny single men 18 to 35, who cannot get a date, get laid, and get control of women, to whom Trump has promised to be their “retribution,” which does nothing to get them a date, laid, or control.)  To the degree that these supporters believe themselves scorned by these elites, to that degree they resent and resist information and advice from them.  Static polls indicate that endorsements by authorities or celebrities in the entertainment, social, political, or military domains like Taylor Swift, Oprah Winfrey, Liz Cheyney, and John Kelly, among many others, have failed to move these voters to support Harris.  The ultimate in rejecting authority, whether it be of persons, norms, or facts, is Trump’s liabilities which defy them.  The irony of the “Trump paradox” is that this anti-authoritarianism is the basis of his support and his authoritarianism.

 

In fairness, anti-authoritarianism is as American pie.  After all, the American Revolution was a rebellion against monarchial authoritarianism.  Unfortunately, anti-authoritarianism persisted because the colonies did not enjoy a tradition of a long-established, long-respected government; it had to invent one—which is why American democracy is often regarded and referred to as an experiment.  Its new government, however noble its intentions, lacked the authority traditionally invested in government and giving it stability.  Its governing charter, the Constitution, emerged, not gradually, with popular acceptance evolving as it evolved over the years, but suddenly, with underlying concerns about mob rule—today’s term: populism—embedded in its restrictions on representative governance, and with that great rift-maker, slavery.  What it thought was a barrier against mob rule, the Electoral College, has turned out to be ineffective because the country’s expansion was in agrarian areas, with small, undereducated, and underserved populations with long-standing resentments against “Eastern” bankers and corporate magnates, the elites of their day.  Ironically and probably unknown to him, the New Yorker Trump embodies that widespread resentment, just how widespread to become manifest in the election results, especially if he wins the presidency, in a few days.  If he does but democracy has a second chance afterwards, those who believe in the experiment will have to adjust the Constitution to accommodate, eventually to eradicate, resentment of elites.