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.”