Despite its officials’ talk about accountability, Las Cruces city government is incapable of accountability for the conduct of the Las Cruces Police Department. City Council’s lack the conviction and courage, the City Manager’s indifference or timidity, and the Police Chief’s weakness allow no hope for police reform. Without it, there will be no improved police work, not only no better routine services, but also no lower risks of harm and no lower settlements costs from excessive use of force, including police murders of citizens.
Police Chief Story’s remarks after the end of a recent trial of an LCPD officer raise the issue of police accountability. The city government’s response to my long-standing, unresolved complaint bears on this issue. Together, they demonstrate the need for an independent body to receive and assess complaints from Las Cruces citizens about police conduct. They distrust the police—so testified then-Deputy Police Chief to City Council—and are dissatisfied that the LCPD responds to their complaints by ignoring them. Given the LCPD’s resistance to reform on the one hand and to citizens and their complaints on the other hand, citizens need some forum encouraging them to air their grievances and to have hope for remediation.
The LCPD strategy when challenged in public is to tell stories. According to a KFOX14 news report (21 Jan 2025) about the officer cleared in an excessive force case from 2022, LCPD Chief Jeremy Story stated, “When an officer makes a mistake, there is accountability.” He went on to say, “Just as important, when an officer does their job, we will stand behind them all the way to the finish line.” No one can be entirely clear from his telling whether a mistake-making officer is held accountable by the courts or by the LCPD. My guess is that Story wants the public to think that the LCPD holds the officer accountable, and it is possible that it does. The public must take his word on trust because the LCPD cannot discuss “personnel matters” in public. However, in the context of the acquittal, it was the court which held the officer accountable. A less contrived statement would have said simply that a verdict had been rendered and presumably justice served.
But Story has a tale too tell. It is the same tale which LCPD police chiefs tell on all such occasions. In 2020, after George Floyd’s murder, when the public was criticizing police everywhere, then-Deputy Police Chief Miguel Dominguez told City Council, “We make mistakes. We will own up to our mistakes.” Responding to his general invitation to contact the police, I did, and—surprise—I got no response, much less an owning up to multiple LCPD mistakes in my case. So my experience is that the LCPD not only does not admit its mistakes, but goes to great lengths not to admit them.
My case occurred in a 5-year period just before Story took command, but, once he did, he had his chance to address and correct the consequences of those earlier mistakes but refused to do so. Here is that story. A year ago December, I met with him and showed him the documents which proved that Internal Affairs had found the five code violations alleged against me to be false but had failed to address them in response to my complaint. As he reviewed them while I discussed them, he frowned and muttered that he saw things which he did not like. Good show. For, in the aftermath, he did nothing to correct my record. When we met at a McClure town hall, I said that my file should be cleaned up, he lied that there was no file, and I promised to send him proof. When I did so, he said that he would get back to me, but he never did, even after reminders.. No truth-telling; no promise-keeping.
So I am doubtful that Story, since he does not hold himself bound by the LCPD policy on honesty, would hold any LCPD mistake-maker accountable. If he did, he would lose the support of his officers and their union, the City Manager, and City Council. For at least three IA officers, two previous Police Chiefs, two City Managers, two Interim City Managers, and one City Attorney refused to take action to dismiss the allegations. (An assistant city attorney resisted disclosing redactions in documents by lying to an Assistant New Mexico Attorney General about their contents; resistance ended when the AAG’s opinion upheld my IPRA complaint.) Meanwhile, no City Council member from 2019 forward did one thing to support their dismissal. When police conduct is an issue, constituent service is an alien concept to its members. More generally, city government is ethically challenged in addressing proven LCPD misconduct. Such a lapse does not bode well when the federal government threatens local elected officials and police officers with prosecutions for not obeying illegal dictates. We can expect the LCPD, with a leader having no moral compass, only a political finger in the wind instead, to knuckle under.
Story has been sensible and suave in dealing with such near-crisis problems as stolen shopping carts, repeatedly broken windows, panhandling, and other low-intensity but persistent and publicly unpleasant misdemeanors. His ideas about dealing with various kinds of perpetrators and various kinds and levels of offenses are not unreasonable; they are certainly superior to the string-‘em-up approach of some of his professional brethren and some politicians. Council is content with his mellifluous, reassuring stories about efforts to reduce misdemeanor crimes. But tested in a minor case which required an ethical response, he failed. He has yet to be tested in a major case on his watch which involves excessive use of force or something which might cast shade on him, the LCPD, or the city. The outlook is not promising.
My case, except for my persistence in pursuing it and exposing the rot in the LCPD, is not unusual. The LCPD gives out other false citations for code violations, minor traffic infractions, and unpleasant encounters with citizens. Few, if any, contest them, certainly not as I have done. So they, their families, and their friends learn to distrust the police, and such distrust is widespread. Dominguez admitted as much, yet no councilor wanted to expose LCPD’s hostile interactions with citizens by asking why LCPD officers were distrusted. The situation remains so bad today that Councilor Johana—I support “real police reform”—Bencomo believes that improvement lies in minimizing police/citizen interactions. Yet she and other Council members prattle about “community policing.”
Las Cruces officials’ resistance to a civilian police oversight commission is understandable. Council Members, the City Manager, and the Police Chief know that it would expose the failures of the LCPD and its leaders. It would expose the $75,000-per-year whitewashing by OIR, the infamous police auditor, as useless and wasteful. Two years ago, its agent testified in all seriousness that citizen/police interactions were all good—because the police said they were; OIR interviewed exactly not one citizen involved in an interaction, good or bad, with the police. Which fact points to another: the members of Council do not care any more than the police do about citizen opinion when it comes to the performance of the LCPD.
Which points to another fact: without a civilian police oversight commission, Council members can continue to impede public knowledge of the LCPD culture of incompetence and misconduct. Such a commission, free from their efforts to repress public discussion, would give citizens a venue to address issues of police reform and public safety, issues which Council members desperately want to avoid.
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