PRE-NAZI GERMANY ALL OVER AGAIN

In the 1920s, German fascists on the right and German communists on the left fought against each other with roughly the same ugly tactics—propaganda and violence.  What distinguished the fascists was their focus on minority groups.  They attacked Jews (by blaming them for Germany’s defeat in the First World War), lesbians and homosexuals, gypsies (so-called at the time; rightly, Roma), the mentally and physically handicapped.  They attacked individuals—artists, writers, intellectuals—and institutions—newspapers, theaters, and museums—because they were cosmopolitan, modern, or un-German.  In part, these attacks reflected culture wars typical of rural-urban divides.  Once in power, the Nazis used police to imprison opponents on false charges and packed courts with Nazi or politically sympathetic judges.  They reorganized or reconstituted cultural institutions, seized and controlled the media, purged university faculties, and redesigned educational curriculums along politically acceptable ideological lines.  After a rigged election to confirm Hitler’s rise to the chancellorship, the Nazis held no further elections.  Obedient to Der Fuhrer, who ignored the restraints of norms, laws, and treaties, Germany under the Nazis embarked on wars which brought it to defeat and ruin.

That was then; this is now.  The Republican Party, its members, and far-right groups are repeating the conduct of the Nazi Party under the leadership of a would-be dictator like Hitler.  Parallels include verbal and physical attacks on minorities—Blacks, Muslims, Asian-Americans, Jews (consider American Blacks as a scapegoat structurally comparable to German Jews)—immigrants, LGBTQs, and women; judges and courts; professors and universities; the media; truth, science, and expertise; and, of course, government, the election systems, and democracy.

One difference between Hitler and Trump is that the former had policy purposes—elimination of the Jews and expansion to the East—and the latter has only the personal purposes of self-promotion and power.  In line with its leader, the Republican Party has abandoned all pretense of policy or principle; its 2020 campaign lacked even an anodyne platform statement.  Party officials at federal and state levels adopt any positions taken and adapt to any changes, including reversals, made by Trump.  They pledge their loyalty to an autocratic leader, accepting his wishes as their commands and his lies as their truth.  Republican legislators are rigging elections by gerrymandering, suppressing voting, and authorizing legislature overrides of election results.  More than ever, a majority of Democratic votes will not ensure the election of Democrats.  The record of the Supreme Court, which rigged the 2000 election of George Bush, signals that anti-democratic means ensuring Republican ends will withstand court challenge and receive court sanction.  In short, Republicans are replicating the same tactics to achieve and maintain power as the Nazis used.

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In this context, the role and conduct of the police is critical.  In Germany, before Hitler’s rise to power, the police supported fascist rather than communist gangs.  During his rise to power, the Nazis had their own “police” force, the Brown Shirts, organized thugs who attacked opponents, damaged or destroyed their homes or stores, or beat or murdered them in the streets.  As the Nazi Party became more powerful, local police, sympathetic to its views about those accused of betraying or weakening Germany, increasingly supported the Nazi Party.  They progressed from standing by and doing nothing to deter Nazi violence or to arrest those who committed it, to abetting it.

In America, politicians of both parties have used the police to serve political purposes as well as public services.  Which means that politicians have used the police to serve partisan policies; which means that the police abuse people. The history of police abuses is, of course, a long one.  As more episodes of police misconduct become publicized as they never were in the past, that history makes it clear that modern police misconduct is an extension of past police misconduct.  Recent episodes of police misconduct, especially racist killings of Black men and women, have attracted attention and prompted demands for police reform.  In the larger scheme of things, these disturbing individual episodes are symptomatic of bigger problems with police departments.

The police have always been used to obtain, increase, or maintain political power and protect political policies.  In rural areas and small towns, police departments have acted as the muscle, “the long arm of the law,” extending government power.  There were close ties between Democratic, racist city councils, racist police departments, and racist groups like the KKK in southern, south-central, and other “red” states, or in racist areas in states like Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, where emigrants from the South and immigrants from third-world countries have settled.  There are close ties between Democratic city councils in major metropolitan cities and their police forces.  Many know of the “police riot” unleashed by Democratic Chicago Mayor Richard Daley against anti-Vietnam War demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

Over time, many cities and states have relinquished power to the police by state or local law, or union contract.  Governments have thereby reduced or relinquished their responsibility for oversight and control, and police departments, largely controlled by police unions, have become semi-independent agencies answerable mostly to themselves, beyond transparency and accountability.  Police misconduct protected from government oversight and control ranges from false charges, false accounts of their conduct, and perjury (“testilying”), to extortion, larceny, and murder.  The myth of the “few bad apples”—the rest of the adage is: “spoil the barrel”—is evident in the fact that the so-assumed “good apples” know who the “bad apples” are, know what they do to be bad, yet, out of greater loyalty to their colleagues than to their oaths to uphold the law, say nothing and thereby give them tacit consent.

All of this police behavior which violates their obligation to safety, security, and safety is old hat.  Nothing new about it.  What is new is the increasing tendency of police leadership and police officers to accept and act according to current political issues in disregard of the law and the courts.  Maricopa County, AZ, Sheriff Joe Arpaio ordered harassment, profiling, and arrests of anyone resembling Hispanics, and refused to obey court orders to desist.  Notably, Trump pardoned this outspoken political supporter; Republicans said and did nothing.  Several New Mexico sheriffs declared that they would not enforce the governor’s legitimate restrictions to deal with the spread of covid-19.  Some LCPD officers publicly refused to enforce violations of those restrictions, even when called to do so.  Kenosha, WI, police officers let Kyle Rittenhouse, an armed white man carrying lethal weapons, through police lines before and after he killed two marchers protesting the shooting which paralyzed Jacob Blake.  They also provided water, and expressed appreciation, to members of a right-wing group of armed counter-protesters.  The besiegers of Congress on 6 January 2021 reportedly included several police officers.

Alarming is the disproportionate numbers and unequal distribution of those arrested and the disparity in the disposition of their charges.  Relatively few right-wing protesters were arrested, but most had their charges sustained.  A comparatively far larger number of left-wing protesters were arrested on trumped-up—that is, false—charges in deliberate violation of their Constitutional rights of free speech, assembly, and petition.  In almost all of hundreds of such cases, the charges were quickly dropped or dismissed—clear evidence that the arrests were legally unsupportable.

This record of arrests strongly suggests that the truth of police charges mattered little; supporting their political interests mattered much.  This devaluing of truth in making false arrests is an essential fact about police conduct in dealing harshly with those whom Trump has attacked severely.  By accepting Trump’s false accusations of criminal behavior by groups which he has targeted for verbal attacks and physical abuse, Republicans imply tolerance of false charges and police violence.  Their acceptance of lies about big things like “stolen” elections implies acceptance of lies about lesser things, like targets of bigotry or opponents of policy.  They are signaling tolerance of police misconduct if it serves their shared political interests.

The increasing convergence of the political stances and sympathies of Republican politicians and rank-and-file police officers must raise concern that convergence and conspiracy will evolve into collaboration, with the police acting as the party’s enforcer.   Because Republican have accepted the denial, disregard, or distortion of truth, police forces know that already well-established practices of police misconduct—improper stops, illegal searches, excessive force, and false arrests—will go unpunished.  They will continue to use them to intimidate, inconvenience, or incarcerate people viewed as opposition.  Republican rule will lead to a police state.

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Dishonesty and the tolerance of dishonesty, measure the moral rot in a society.  German civilians, themselves antisemitic in all the little ways, readily accepted the big antisemitic lies of the Nazis which led to book burnings, the Nuremberg Laws, and the concentration camps.  They heard speeches, watched newsreels, and saw violence against Jews.  In a famous picture, an officer pointing a pistol at his back, a young Jewish boy holds his hands up; German sidewalk onlookers watch with callous indifference.  Soldiers sent their families photographs of atrocities against Polish and Russian Jews.  Only after defeat and disclosure did millions of German civilian onlookers—some of whom betrayed Jewish colleagues or neighbors to the Gestapo—claim to have known nothing about the fate awaiting the Jews in the Final Solution.  The self-praising pretense is that, if they had only known, they would have resisted.  Still, the lie: they knew, they did nothing when they could before the Nazis took over, and feared doing anything after they did.

Las Cruces has its own variants akin to pre-Nazi Germans, the people indifferent to or tolerant of police dishonesty and misconduct.  City Councilors have talked little and done nothing about, and local media have done little to address, police reform after local demonstrations responding to George Floyd’s murder.  “Eight Can’t Wait” got the gate.  Only after a long struggle did City Council get a police auditor under contract to exonerate the LCPD—hardly a step toward reform.  They have chosen to avoid details of, and learn lessons from, LCPD dishonesty and misconduct in my case.  In one instance, Councilor Johana Bencomo and columnist-commentator Peter Goodman showed their affinity for avoidance.  I invited both to zoom a meeting between City Manager Ifo Pili and CoP Miguel Dominguez, and me; both heard Pili assure me of an apology detailing LCPD misconduct and Dominguez say that he wanted to follow up with me on reforms; and both learned that neither man kept his promise.  Both knew that LCPD and Law Office personnel lied at almost every opportunity.  Yet neither followed up with me or has said or done anything about these broken promises and lies.  Bencomo has offered no resolution or ordinance for police reform, and Goodman, who interrupted me to assure me that Pili had met my demands, has ducked having me discuss the issue on air.  Neither cares that Mayor Miyagishima has broken his promise for me to present my case to the OIR exonerators.

Such indifference to truth and promise-keeping prepares for lies, first little, later big, and their consequences.  Switch perspective: Pili and Dominguez know that these and other pillars of the Progressive Council and the Progressive caucus are indifferent to dishonesty and misconduct in the city’s legal community.  They have been thus assured that police reform is mere political bark without political bite.  If Trump Republicans elect themselves to control the country, it will be too late to matter if the Bencomos and the Goodmans of the country come to regret their part in the demise of democracy, with “oh, if we had only known!” self-exonerations.  Going along with it dying, they will get along just fine with it dead.

Fortunately, other city governments in more important cities are making some effort to reform the police.  That effort has to do more than confine attention to lethal bigotry in police departments and officers.  At a time when democracy itself is under threat from the Republican Party, reform must emphasize the depoliticization of the police, the claw-back of authority from police unions, and the re-establishment of government control and oversight, through legislated requirements for honesty, transparency, and accountability.  For its part, Las Cruces will be content with CoP Dominguez’s blather.

WHAT IS THE LIFE OF A (BLACK) PERSON WORTH?

   Derek Chauvin defined the market value of a Black man’s life when he killed George Floyd in response to a storekeeper’s complaint that he had used a counterfeit bill to buy cigarettes.  Thanks to Chauvin, we know that, without slavery and auctions to establish a market value for Blacks and their labor, the value of a Black man’s life in Minneapolis is worth no more than $20, the face value of the bill claimed to be counterfeit.  That claim is unconfirmed, and it is too late to ask whether, if the bill was counterfeit, Floyd knew it to be so.  But the police rule of engagement is: escalate the encounter and kill the Black man first, skip the questions later—unless the murder gets videoed and goes viral.

What Chauvin did, police elsewhere do every day.  They demonstrate the low value which they place on the lives of people, any of us—white, yellow, red, brown, black—, whom they are supposed to protect and serve by killing us for misdemeanors, allegations of misdemeanors, or no misdemeanors at all, merely harmless behavior.  They kill people for having an outstanding warrant for a misdemeanor, selling “loosey” cigarettes, driving with an expired license or a broken taillight, sitting in a parked car, playing with a toy gun, and, perversely, even obeying a police order.  In these cases, public safety was not at risk; private lives were at risk.

The police know that the offenses are trivial.  To get to killing, they initiate, escalate, then execute.  The critical step is escalation.  The police are abusive and aggressive; they provoke resistance, often just their victim’s avoidance or self-defense responses as a pretext for more violent exertions to subdue and apprehend their victim, and charges of resisting arrest.  Many episodes like Chauvin’s murder of Floyd reflect “street justice” by which police punish people before they get access to the judicial system.

Police street justice mocks the legal system which boasts two basic principles: the proportionality of punishment and crime, and equality under the law.  The disparity between legal principle and police practice is too great to take the boast seriously.  These many episodes show us police street justice mismatching death and misdemeanors and, under color of law, inequality reflecting biases based on skin pigmentation or other deviation from a white, male, Christian norm.

Police street justice is Orwellian, as in Animal Farm, in which ruling pigs declare that all pigs are equal but some more equal than others.  Police are more equal by virtue of “blue privilege.”  When accused of misconduct, they benefit from special investigative procedures and prosecutorial inhibitions.  The rarity of legal accountability enables street justice by shielding police who dispense it on the job.

If we are not blinded by quasi-patriotic appeals to the heroism of those wearing the blue, we see that the “overkill” of street justice is a moral and legal regression to early barbaric practices, when disproportionate vengeance was the usual response to a crime.  For example, if a man raped a woman from another village, her family or village would retaliate by killing everyone in the man’s family or village.  Likewise, police street justice whether or not a misdemeanor has been committed is disproportionate vengeance.

The civilized principle of justice which replaced disproportionate vengeance is the principle of proportionate compensation, the Jewish principle underlying most legal systems throughout the world today.  Christians often mistakenly interpret the phrase “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” as a law of revenge, like the Roman lex talionis, also used by other early societies.  No Jewish court in Holy Scriptures or Jewish communities ever applied it but, instead, awarded material compensation deemed proportionate to the damage inflicted.  In cases of murder, judges were duty-bound to find a legal reason to save the life of the accused—in effect, no death penalty.  One court caused a scandal when its failure to find such an excuse led to an execution; it was known thereafter as the “Bloody Sanhedrin.”

Reforms to end police street justice should address rules of engagement.  One, police should not use force or weapons in the enforcement of non-violent offenses, whether felonies or misdemeanors.  Two, police should not use a weapon until the suspect uses or attacks with a weapon (brandishing a weapon does not count).

Other reforms should address investigative procedures and prosecutorial decisions.  One should eliminate special investigative provisions for police.  They should not be allowed a multi-day delay between episode and interview, and they should be required to establish a reasonable basis, not a mere perception, that a suspect posed an immediate threat to his own, another’s, or the officer’s life.  Another should require an independent review of a prosecutor’s proposed decision about charging police.

Reforming recruitment qualifications might minimize police misconduct.  Shortages should not justify recruiting those less likely to exercise self-restraint or good judgment.  The LCPD seeks recruits at least 19 years old with at least a high school degree (23 July Bulletin).  Lower standards for recruits are possible, but these are as close to bottom as it gets without hitting bottom.  In contrast, insurance companies charge their highest rates to drivers under 25 for good reason; they pose high risks to themselves and others, even without the police swagger.  Guns in the hands of inexperienced, immature teenagers wearing badges and uniforms should scare everyone.  Why the Police Chief seeks such recruits for the LCPD is a question for the City Manager and City Councilors.  It should recruit only those at least 26 years old and with at least an associate degree in a relevant discipline.  Better higher salaries to attract suitable recruits and retain proven veterans than expensive settlements for the dead and continuing fear and distrust of the police by the still living.

SHOW SOME RESPECT: DON'T CALL PIGS THE POLICE

No pig has ever lied about or to me.  LCPD Codes Officer Juan Valles lied about me when he falsely charged me the five violations.  LCPD Chief of Police Patrick Gallagher lied to me when he falsely accused me of maligning Valles by lying when, in fact, I had told the truth about those five lies.  Police dishonesty in trivial offenses is not a novelty in Las Cruces or elsewhere.  (The hired police auditor will ignore this actual dishonesty because it will find that the LCPD has an excellent policy on honesty.)  Not to be left behind in lies for serious offenses by the police in big cities or small towns, White LCPD Officer Christopher Smelser threatened on camera “to choke you out bro,” then claimed in court that he did not intend to kill Latino Antonio Valenzuela by a choke hold.

In the past three weeks, not one pig has shot, strangled, or killed a single person.  But in that period, police have shot, strangled, or killed on average of three people a day, over half of them Black and Latino.  These facts, with a long record of comparable facts, signify an occupational culture of violence and, in many incidents, pervasive, vicious racism in police departments.  Not all police offenders are White; some are of color.  These minority police offenders act as they are trained—all target silhouettes are black—and seek to earn or retain the approval and support of their fellow White officers.  But in sties, pigs of all colors get along just fine so long as they are fed their slops.

A few people think that pork is not kosher, most like bacon, but none divides pigs into bad and good.  Police offenders are often labeled and discounted as a few “bad apples.”  The problem, like that of pedophiliac priests in the Catholic Church, is that the many “good apples” shield the “bad apples” with unbroken silence or tacit support.  So just how good are the “good apples”?  Are they not sympathizers, if not accessories, after, if not before, the fact?  Nowhere is the problem more evident than in the positions taken by their unions.  Like the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, police union officials defend their members, and their members, most of them “good apples,” approve their positions.  The most extreme instance is a recent one in Chicago.  CPD union leader John Catanzara said Officer Eric Stillman, who shot and killed 13-year-old Adam Toledo when his empty hands were lifted in response to his order, acted “heroically.”  In the eyes of the police, it is easy to be a hero: shoot an unarmed child.  No pig ever did such a thing.

The list of police shooting-killings and other lesser violent abuses is long and growing longer.  A notable incident in a rural, not urban, setting is the police stop in Windsor, VA, during which Officers Latino Joe Gutierrez and White Daniel Crocker stopped, harassed, threatened, struck, handcuffed, and pepper-sprayed Army 2nd Lt. Caron Nazario, half Black, half Latino, who was in uniform.  Police Chief Rodney Riddle initially tried the usual defense, blaming the victim to justify the officers’ conduct.  He claimed that the victim “created” the situation because he did not react “immediately” to the officers’ commands.  (I'm 81; I react slowly; do I qualify for pepper-spraying?)  Only when the public outcry overwhelmed him, did the Chief say—that is, lie—that he deplored the officers’ conduct.  What especially infuriates me is that police in uniform showed no respect for a soldier in uniform—a clear case of racism at work.

A comparison of zones of operation indicates the degradation of American police.  In Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, American troops operated in a foreign county whose civilians spoke local languages and lived according to local customs, and whose loyalties were neither obvious nor certain.  When I was in Vietnam ’65-’66, almost every American soldier felt some fear for his life 24/7/52.  I am sure that most veterans there before and after me felt the same.  Few could be entirely sure that even a Vietnamese girlfriend was not a spy, a saboteur, or a soldier.  I was one of the few.  Fear often prompted feelings of resentment and hostility, and led to itchy-fingerness.  I felt the fear but responded atypically, with nonchalant fatalism.  Except for special operations and the moral, if not legal, abomination of “free-fire zones,” the general rule of engagement was to fire only when fired upon.  Of course, the rule was honored in its breaches, and many but not all went unreported or unpunished.  War is hell, not least in such environments.

By comparison to soldiers encountering people in a combat zone in a foreign country, police officers operating in peacetime are supposed to protect and serve fellow citizens with whom they share a language and most customs.  Police talk of wars on crime, drugs, or whatever, but none is a war or none justifies the stale rationales for shooting first and asking questions later.  In case after case, the officer initiates contact, escalates it, and executes the victim.  Then, in a U-turn, the police officer justifies the killing because he felt in fear for his life; he claims—a claim often later rendered doubtful or disproven—to have seen, or thought that he saw, the victim holding or reaching for a weapon.  Did the officer not know that his work might be dangerous?  Does he not know how to manage fear?  Does he think that civilians are enemies?  Whose or what interest is he serving?

One thing I know: training is no solution.  Training is another lie.  No pig tells it; only police officers and self-touting police reformers tell it as the easy way to placate public opinion.  It is ineffective; no police bigot has ever mended his ways or reformed his conduct because of sensitivity training.  And remember: pigs do not need it. 

HOUSES OF WORSHIP CAUSE THEIR "DISMEMBERSHIP"

The proportion of Americans who consider themselves members of a church, synagogue or mosque has dropped below 50 percent, according to a poll from Gallup released Monday. It is the first time that has happened since Gallup first asked the question in 1937, when church membership was 73 percent.  (The Washington Post, March 29, 2021)

This news is not big news.  Church attendance has been declining for decades.  Who cares and why?  Aside from sponsored charities, churches are making little contribution to the national weal.  Most are uninspiring or irrelevant; others, especially evangelical churches with substantial membership, contribute more than a fair share to dissension and division, to bigotry and abuse, and to the general dissipation of norms of social decency and personal respect.  Love your enemy—huh?  who said so?

Yesterday, during the mid-twentieth-century Civil Rights Movement, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., vexed David Lawrence, publisher-columnist of U.S. New & World Report, because, so Lawrence opined, King did not know that his place was in the pulpit, not on the pavement.  King was not alone in his social activism; of white clergy, rabbis in disproportionate numbers, some leading Protestant ministers, and a few Catholic priests were also active for civil rights.  As notable as any was Yale Chaplain William Sloane Coffin, Jr., who led the Freedom Rides for Voting Rights in the South.

Today, almost all clergy notable for their views on social matters are from evangelical denominations.  Their message is not a moral plea for societal reform—at his best, Billy Graham was ambiguous about desegregation and opposed to King’s efforts—but a garble of Biblical snippets or interpretations almost invariably at odds with the meaning of the text—at its worst, Joel Osteen’s “prosperity gospel” claims that Jesus wants us rich—or, from a national perspective, political trivia about matters of gender orientation, sexual mores, or procreative choices.  To me, these preoccupations bespeak dirty minds.

The younger generations—I speak broadly, of course; most alt-right misfits are under 40—want or at least accept more in the way of diversity and equality.  The reason is not hard to seek.  The end of legal segregation and the fact of some integration has meant that many people, more urban than rural, have grown up in close(r) association with people different from themselves.  They are classmates, teammates, co-workers, friends, and lovers.  They may have some lingering taint of culturally present bigotries, but they talk as if they are trying to banish them from their lives.  When they seek guidance in dealing with moral issues like honesty, empathy, respect for others, etc., they rarely look to churches, synagogues, or mosques which do not preach or apply such messages to daily life.  Rev. William Barber is a notable exception.  Except for him, when was the last time a prominent man or woman of the cloth was seen leading a movement by organizing efforts at social reform?  So the younger generations have left or continue to leave once-respected institutions in search of something to address their needs.

Obviously, churches are not doing so or, in some cases, doing so for shabby reasons.  As the “rabbi” to my ex-step daughter, an Episcopal priest, I hope for revivals of the Episcopal and Lutheran churches.  I find the efforts of the National Cathedral, the closest thing which we have to a national church, deserving.  The Presbyterian and Methodist churches still have their work cut out for them in their struggle against racism.  Baptist and Catholic churches—well, let me move on.  Even so, the language of faith, grace, redemption, and divine love which fills most sermons offers comfort to some, but it is not the language of action, urges no action, not even self-scrutiny or self-criticism, and, to the modern mind, conveys little meaning and inspires very little.  Anyone aware of the harmful, hateful words and deeds of, say, Christian anti-abortionists, Christian anti-immigrants, or White Christian nationalists knows the signs of the anti-Christ.

One note in line with my previous blogs on matters of religion.  From my Jewish perspective, a defect of Christianity is its lack of a defined code of conduct.  The Nicene and Apostles Creeds speak of Jesus’s miraculous birth and his miserable death, with no word about his teachings, mainly moral.  This gap reflects Paul’s antinomian rejection of the Jewish Law.  Paul’s love is no instruction, guide, or even a restraint.  So Christianity has filled its moral void with locally acceptable cultural, political, and religious customs, norms, and practices.  Today, direction for the many nominally Christian is increasingly political dogmas, culture-wars issues, and alt-right cult causes—not sources of humane, never mind presumably Christian, values, principles, and practices.

Of many who have abandoned religion—I exclude DIY religions—and affiliated with the political extremes, moral atrophy is their distinguishing feature.  The farther one moves to the left, the closer one gets to the right, and vice versa.  Ardent Progressives are little different from ardent Trump supporters; both demand party loyalty, ideological or doctrinal purity, denigrate or attack opponents, deny or avoid facts not conforming to beliefs, and refuse discussion or debate.  Locally, Progressives have failed or refused to face the dodges, deceits, and derelictions of a Progressive-dominated City Council in matters of police reform.  They are wrong to think that causes are adequate substitutes for conscience and character.  Truth, honesty, and the courage of righteous convictions are everywhere in short supply.   I have seen Diogenes with his lantern walking the streets of Las Cruces.

So, in the absence of or silence from worthy moral leadership addressing these issues in churches, synagogues, and mosques, I fear a moral anarchy enabled by mendacious or anodyne media pundits and morally confused or politically opportunistic leaders in business, education, law, religion, and government.  I fear that individualism—“do your thing,” not do the right thing—has corrupted the social ethic, frayed the social fabric, and debilitated the communal impulses of civil society.  These deficiencies, which religious commitments worthy of the name can help remedy, are undermining American democracy.  Americans who do not come to think of themselves as a people, as in “We the People,” can expect to become first a mob, then an autocracy, in an apartheid America.

LAS CRUCES POLICE AUDITOR EMPLOYED TO EXONERATE

[11 Jan 22  update: The OIR audit omitted 2 years of complaints, between 31 December 2018 and 31 December 2020.  It thus precluded my first complaint, on 5 August 2019, about phony charges against me for five code violations.  The OIR audit included all complaints only from 1 January 2021, despite which date, on advice from the City Attorney, IA excluded my second complaint, on 2 June 2021, on antisemitism as the motive for those charges on the obviously spurious ground that the second complaint duplicated the first.  Las Cruces City Council unanimously did not want my case to interfere with a whitewash with the customary praise and a few tweaks to suggest a proper audit.]

The police auditor contract approved by City Attorney Jennifer Vega-Brown requires OIR Group to “review and report” on “all formal citizen ... complaints and investigations” “to ensure [IA’s] investigations were complete, objective, thorough, and fair and that findings and actions taken in response to the investigations were appropriate.”

An absurd provision.  OIR cannot be sure that it will see “all” complaints.  It will see only those complaints which the LCPD provides and neither excludes nor “overlooks.”  OIR cannot “ensure” either the completeness, objectivity, thoroughness, and fairness of closed-out investigations—done is done—or, thus, the appropriateness of responses to their findings and actions.  And, within budget, OIR cannot properly examine available documents or correlate them with referenced events.  Yet the provision is less inept than it seems: it signals the city’s desired outcome of OIR’s “review and report”—exoneration.

More generally, the 1-year contract is suspect.  The maximum cost is $75,000.  Each of the five OIR personnel assigned to this contract, three being OIR principals, commits 20 percent of his or her time to the contract.  OIR implies a person-year of $75,000, an implausibly low annual salary for professionals, especially in California.  Explanations for this figure range from wink-and-nod or handshake understandings that the maximum cost will be renegotiated and increased during the contract period, to a loss-leader contract to secure option-year contracts at much higher costs.  The latter explanation raises the possibility of client-pleasing results to secure those follow-on contracts.

For that reason, OIR might not examine my unpopular complaint.  The Mayor has vacillated on his promise that I might present it to OIR, Council members have ignored it, and the LCPD has mishandled it.  So I infer that they might not make it available to OIR.  To prevent an “inadvertent oversight,” I sent it pertinent complaint records by email and certified mail.  Whether or not OIR examines my complaint, it cannot claim ignorance.

Ordinarily, OIR’s work would be guided by IA’s six labeled categories of complaint results.  OIR would see the result of my complaint labeled “sustained other”—“other” meaning a violation not in the complaint—, note the officer’s violation, and likely move on, with no reason to examine the complaint itself.

A proper examination of IA’s investigation of my complaint, however, would probably take undue time and effort to identify its many issues and questions, as shown below, and to address and answer them.  Even if other complaints and IA’s investigations are less complex than mine, OIR would still find it difficult or impossible to examine “all” of them in enough detail to make reliable analyses and evaluations of them.  Cursory inspections of IA files and LCPD records, and paper shuffling seem inevitable.

Issue 1: Two interviews of Officer Juan Valles: on or before 11 September 2019, James Chavez, Chief Codes Administrator; on 14 January 2020, by IA Sergeant Sean Mullen.  In between, on 17 December 2019, Police Chief Patrick Gallagher emailed that the investigation was complete by 11 September.

1. Why was a second interview necessary?
2. What explains the 4-month interval between the two interviews?
3. Did IA find the discrepancies between the interviews?  If so, how did it treat them?
4. Did IA deem the second interview more credible than the first one?  If so, why?

Issue 2: Late IA claim of Valles’s failure to record a 1 August conversation 2019.  In a 7 January 2020 meeting with Gallagher, then-IA Chief Rebecca Kinney, and others, I said that the recording would support my account of it.  On 5 February 2020, Mullen noted Valles’s failure.  On 19 February 2020, Kinney’s close-out letter reports that violation of policy.

1. When did IA learn about or discover Valles’s failure to record the conversation?
2. When it learned about or discovered this failure, why did IA not seek to interview me for my account of the conversation?
3. Why did IA accept Valles’s uncontested version of our conversation?
4. Why did IA regard Valles’s explanation of his failure as trustworthy?

Issue 3 Undisclosed confirmation in Mullen’s 5 February 2020 memorandum that all five charges were unfounded.  “Mr. Hays’ warning notice had several violations marked to which there was no physical evidence or proof an actual violation had occurred.”

1. Why did Mullen put this central finding under the heading “Ancillary Issues”?
2. Why did Mullen make excuses for these false charges?
3. What policy allows IA to make excuses overriding the facts of false charges?
4. Why did Kinney’s 19 February 2020 close-out letter not report this finding?
5. Why did IA make no official determination (“sustained”) that the charges are false?
6. Why has the LCPD refused to admit that the charges are false?
7. Has Vega-Brown advised the LCPD to make no admission of false charges?
8. What policy justifies retaining the notice of false charges in LCPD files?

If OIR considers these issues and questions in my complaint, it should assess IA’s and LCPD’s overall performance.

1. Has OIR ascertained that IA’s investigation “complete, objective, thorough, and fair and that findings and actions taken in response to the investigations were appropriate”?
2. Does OIR recommend corrections of findings or actions?
3. Has OIR explained why IA and the LCPD let this matter fester instead of resolving it easily, quickly, and professionally?
4. Has OIR ascertained whether IA and the LCPD followed or enforced department policies, like General Order 103.17 Truthfulness, in this case?
A. “Employees shall not knowingly make a false statement in connection with any investigation, assignment, or inquiry....
B. Employees shall not knowingly sign any false official statement or report, commit perjury, or give false testimony whether or not under oath.
C. Employees are required to completely, honestly, and accurately report all facts and information pertaining to any criminal or administrative investigation, or any matter of concern to the department.”
5. Has OIR traced any citizen distrust of police to dishonesty in IA investigations?

OIR’s likely failure to do properly what the contract requires matters little.  A police audit is merely a gambit to get City Council and the LCPD off the hook of transparency and accountability, and any good-faith effort at police reform.  Those who saw Councilor Bencomo change her mind about a citizen review board know that the fix is in and public input is out.  OIR’s report will repeat at least one finding of previous audits: persistent and unrelieved citizen distrust of LCPD police.  Indeed, last June, then-Deputy Police Chief Miguel Dominguez told Council so; no member asked why because no member cares why.  Status quo then, now, and forever!  Where is the progress, Progressives?

CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE SINS OF OMISSION IN LAS CRUCES

When my wife and I relocated to Las Cruces for nursing school and sunshine in 2007, we had a big surprise the next year: downpours from four hurricanes, two from the east, two from the west.  Living on an escarpment, we saw flood-control ponds with water so deep that neighborhood kids swam in them.  We told family and friends that we had lakefront property.  Because the ponds attracted many ducks, waders, and insectivores, the birdwatching was excellent.

The year before, I had attended a district meeting at which newly elected Mayor Ken Miyagishima and Councilor Gil Jones addressed citizen interests in city development.  Most citizens mentioned bicycle paths, shaded bus stops, enhanced city parks, and more—all worthy.  I asked a question which took them by surprise: did the city have a water management plan.  The answer was “no” although climate predictions for a hotter, drier Southwest were already widely accepted.  In private conversations afterwards, I advised thinking about this impending future.  They did not; the flood plain, though incompetently re-arranged, has nothing to do; and the birding is lousy.

Las Cruces does nothing much better than it does anything else.  Inaction is often commendable where infrastructure is concerned.  When it laid a concrete pad to prevent mosquito-breeding ponding in a storm run-off, it failed to anchor the pad.  Rushing water from the next rainstorm lifted the pad, broke it, and lifted the broken section onto the unbroken section—a lesson in Las Cruces incompetence left unrepaired for all to see.

The bigger problem is climate change.  The predicted drought is upon Las Cruces and the rest of the state.  The smaller snow packs in Colorado are beyond anyone’s control; drilling permits to tap aquifers are not, but they are a drop in the bucket, so to speak, as far as a reliable water supply is concerned.  Past water shortages have led to water wars.  Presently, they are predictable if New Mexico governors and legislators do not prepare for the economy-busting effects of long-term droughts.

The three major combatants will be cities, with residential and commercial needs increased by growth; agriculture, and extractive industries.  A struggle between Las Cruces real estate construction and Dona Ana County water-intensive crops like pecans and pistachios is easy to imagine.  Here and elsewhere there will be legal, perhaps even illegal, skirmishes when shortages can no longer be abated by conservation measures like alternate-day lawn watering.

What is needed is state action, from public hearings to legislation.  New Mexico needs principles and procedures to establish priorities; regulations necessarily mandatory in times of stress; and provisions for rigorous enforcement.  The alternative is competition for water, rising water prices, unplanned failures in different economic sectors, social dislocations, adverse environmental effects, and more—none of it good.

Since the effects of the drought are likely to be unevenly distributed, smaller, more remote cities and towns are likely the earliest and greatest victims.  Economic depression will close businesses, close schools, and collapse the housing market.  The state should begin now to identify the most vulnerable cities and towns, and assess how they may be transitioned to an alternative economy or else decommissioned, with assured alternative employment, schools, and housing for relocated residents.  Only government, not the private sector, can take an organized and orderly approach to these problems.

However, if New Mexico is faithful to its past and true to its culture, it will take no action but do nothing very well, and defer the problems, to the next generation, with greatly diminished hopes of solving them.  Meanwhile, it can create a statewide industry of exporting sandbags to riparian or coastal cities fighting rising river or ocean levels.  But it cannot provide more water to meet its needs.

Las Cruces has problems whether it does something or does nothing.  It can develop a water resource plan, make it part of its city planning, and abide by and enforce it.  But if it makes assured additional water supply a condition on building permits, it will anger the construction industry, one of the largest employers in town.  Or the city can do nothing and anger both future and current residential and commercial property owners who will experience “brownouts” or “blackouts” in their water supplies—little or no tap, bath, or toilet water.  So we can all learn the lyrics, “it ain’t gonna rain no more no more; it ain’t gonna rain no more.  So how in the heck can I wash my neck if it ain’t gonna rain no more.”

NEW MEXICO TEACHERS UNDERMINING THE ECONOMY, EDUCATION, AND DEMOCRACY

In A History of the English People (1985), Paul Johnson describes the relationship between England’s economy and its education:

The educational revolution in sixteenth-century England set in motion the chain of events which produced the modern world; and, conversely, England’s educational failures lie at the very root of her decline as a dynamic society.

This melancholy truth leads us to a related, and still more dismal, aspect of the English problem.  A high rate of economic growth cannot be sustained unless there is a corresponding high rate of investment in the education of the people—not merely in technical skills but in social responsibility through the liberal arts. The English ruling establishment ... have fobbed off the working class with a minimum education; and the country has in consequence received a minimum growth-rate. (p. 403)

This correlation between economic vigor and educational quality is also evident in New Mexico, with one of the weakest economies (c. 40^th) and one of the weakest educational systems (c. 50^th) in America.  To improve its economy, the state must first improve education by focusing on the essentials: quality curriculums and quality teachers.  New Mexico has neither.

Instead, New Mexico gives most students an education suitable for low-skill jobs in mining, farming, ranching, construction, retail business, and tourism.  For decades, 4^th- and 8^th-grade proficiency in mathematics and English has averaged about 50 percent.  One-third of high-school graduates require remedial courses if they go on to college, and most college graduates are no better than modestly competent in their field and on the job.  Lofty talk about STEMH—science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and health—is enough hot air to make the Spaceport viable for balloon rallies.  The students who get an education suitable for high-skill careers are too few to constitute a workforce attractive to high-tech companies.  In short, K-12 teachers crank out graduates—I omit dropouts—semi-literate and semi-numerate, and foist them on employers and colleges.

No change for the better is foreseeable because political and educational leaders fail to take education seriously.  Governors disdain higher education by appointing hacks to serve as regents.  Legislators disregard educational qualifications for the Secretary of Education.  Neither The University of New Mexico nor New Mexico State University has enhanced its academic programs or developed research parks worthy of the name.  Arrowsmith Park satirizes the concept.  Despite experience as governor, NMSU College of Business dean, and NMSU president, Garry Carruthers did nothing to better education at NMSU or make it an engine of economic development.

Such leaders deny, or refuse to identify, the biggest problem: poorly prepared and poorly motivated teachers.  In 1963, James D. Koerner’s The Miseducation of American Teachers compared professionals by academics, aptitudes, and attitudes.  Teachers scored lowest then and would score lower now, since women’s liberation has freed the best and the brightest to pursue other professions.  The residue is teachers who, before-grade-inflation, were C students.  No one has accused these would-be teachers of respect, not to mention a passion, for learning, only a desire for higher salaries and job security.

Their champion since 2013 has been Bill Soules, high-school teacher and state senator.  After 8 years on the Senate Education Committee, as a member, vice chair, and, more recently, chair, New Mexico’s educational system remains mired in mediocrity.  He is not single-handedly responsible for the state’s failure in public education.  But he is responsible for doing nothing more than more of the same, which means raising teacher compensation (without assured subject-matter mastery) and funding more programs (with more teachers and without proof of long-term academic benefits).  He has backed bigger education budgets without requiring better educational results.  He has never sought accountability: get better results or face program termination or staff reductions.  But Soules is no fool.  Such expenditures are necessities to secure teachers’ votes and thereby indirect means to fund re-election campaigns with taxpayer dollars.

Soules sponsors the status quo.  He knows that PED-specified teacher qualifications make the state’s public education system a closed shop, de facto, if not de jure.  He knows that school of education programs stress ancillary matters related to diversity and identity, not focus on the basics of academic subjects in both technical fields for careers and humanities for citizenship in a democracy.  What makes his irresponsibility the greater is his indifference or opposition to improvements at little or no cost.  Otherwise, he would sponsor legislation to:

• Define specific educational qualifications for all appointments to educational offices, including the Secretary of Education and university regents
• Direct the state’s Public Education Department (PED) to:
• Set criteria for academic performance to initiate, continue, or terminate educational programs, including early childhood education
• Develop subject-matter curriculums inclusive in coverage, sequenced in delivery, and systematic in treatment, and require curriculum reviews by independent educational evaluators.
• Require schools of education to focus their programs on preparing teachers to teach curriculums as defined or implied by state curriculums
• Require prospective teachers to pass independently developed, delivered, and graded subject-matter examinations with high marks
• Accept accreditation of teachers relocating from other states
• Encourage hiring former military veterans with the expertise to teach higher-grade-level courses
• Give retirees credit for education and experience qualifying them for teaching.

Such alternatives are anathema to Soules and his base for one reason: they demand more of teachers, especially elementary school teachers, than they can deliver.  He knows that advocating these reforms would jeopardize his re-election.  Teachers would be infuriated by efforts to establish higher standards of academic preparation, ensure subject-matter mastery, and give huge compensation increases to only those teachers, old and new alike, achieving high scores on subject-matter tests.  They would decry such reforms as insulting or unfair.  They would oppose legislators, Soules included, who did not continue to support increased numbers and compensation of all teachers, and thereby enlarge a special-interest constituency and swell union political power.

Soules and his base, with PED support, keep New Mexico in a deplorable economic and educational state.  In effect, this anti-education triad mounts an insurrection against the state, not one assaulting government buildings, but one eroding public education by mollycoddling mediocrities.