For reasons which I only partly understand, the police officer’s killing of Sra. Amelia Baca has brought out a lot of sleazy conduct and sloppy thinking.
Sleazy conduct by the usual suspects—Mayor, Councilors, City Manager, City Attorney, Police Chief—follows their usual pattern—my case déjà vu—of refusing to address the facts and admit that a 9-year veteran police officer with over 70 hours of de-escalation training did what policy and training meant to prevent him from doing. But it is unusual in their coordinated efforts to mislead the public by misrepresenting the facts of the killer and shifting the blame to the victim.
The LCPD did two sleazy things. One, contrary to best professional practice—namely, rapidly providing information including bod-cam footage and the officer’s identity—it slowly developed a PR flick, with text and edited footage, which presented the still unidentified officer in a favorable light and the victim in an unfavorable light. Two, instead of developing the PR flick on its own, the LCPD discussed it with personnel in the three agencies which would staff the task force and secured their approval of the film—thereby tainting the investigation. I have detailed these points in an earlier blog.
Sloppy thinking in Peter Goodman’s 19 June Sun-News column “Failure to act has grave consequence” muddles accusations, excuses, and proposals—a little something for everyone’s liking and to no one’s dismay. To those suspicious of the police, Goodman allows that the officer “shouldn’t have killed her”; to those supportive of them, he assures us that the officer “did not think, as he donned his uniform and strapped on his gun, that he wanted to kill someone.” We can all agree on both anodyne points. But nothing suggests “grave”—is a pun intended?—“consequence.”
Goodman emphasizes, not the officer’s conduct or responsibility, but everyone else’s. His blurred focus and moral confusion make him virtually a police collaborator. Sra. Baca’s “family bears some responsibility.” “Responsibility” for what? Being surprised by an unforeseen event? (Does he think that people suffering from dementia predictably run around with kitchen knives?) Opening the door to the officer who then killed her? Keeping her at home in a loving family? Goodman backs off this blame by sympathizing with the family’s motive: “It’s incredibly hard to put a parent or other loved person away.” He equates getting Sra. Baca treatment for dementia with putting her “away”—the idea and language retro and surprising in a mental health advocate.
Goodman then lists others whom he faults: the officer, who “acted unwisely”—a word completely unsuited to characterize his conduct; the LCPD, which provided “inadequate training/supervision”; the city government for not setting up a civilian review board. (Does he think that a board could have kept the officer from killing Sra. Baca?) With remarkable, unlawyerly presumption, he “fault[s] all of us,” even disarmingly blaming himself for doing no more than a column and radio program on the idea.
Goodman could have done more, but he disconnects police dishonesty from police conduct. He knew more than most about my case about the LCPD’s phony charges, and my demands of city leaders. He twice baited me about having me on his radio program but did not, no reason given. He witnessed the City Manager promise me an apology and knew that he did not fulfill it. He said nothing about LCPD dishonesty which I revealed. He says nothing about LCPD dishonesty in creating a PR flick to misrepresent the officer’s conduct to the public, follows its line, and ignores one “grave consequence” of its lack of ethical standards or practices. For Goodman, police dishonesty is not a police failure and does not figure in police misconduct.
Goodman introduces an incoherent discussion about mental health with a question: “Why do I insist that we are all responsible?” His answer:
“First, attitudes. If part of what was in the shooter’s head and heart was that as a sufferer of dementia Ms. Baca was the Other, or mattered less than other citizens, he shared that with many. How we treat “mental illness” — and brain disorders, such as dementia — played a role in this.”
Two minor questions: One of consistency: does he mean “all” or “many” of us? The other: if his “head and heart” led the officer to perceive Sra. Baca as “Other” because of her dementia, does he not require mental health care as well?
Two middling questions: how does “How we treat ‘mental illness’ [play] a role in this?” And what role? Goodman’s answer is scrambled. “If we [had] insisted on … mental health care for all, that cop likely wouldn’t have been placed in a situation where he felt he had only one choice.” Accordingly to his earlier suggestion, Sra. Baca could have been put “away”; alternatively, she could have been received treatment to manage her condition and behavior. Either way, the situation would not have arisen, and the officer would not need options. But Goodman goes wobbly in implying that an adequate mental health care system would generate more police options.
A major question: what connects a mental health care system with a menu of options for a police response to a mental-health crisis? Goodman’s implied defense, information-free but police-pleasing, is absurd: that Sra. Baca’s dementia gave the officer no choice but to kill her. However inadequate, LCDP’s de-escalation training teaches—indeed, its point is to teach—that an officer’s first, last, and only option is not shoot-to-kill a mentally disturbed person. Moreover, the officer was not caught unawares; he had been informed that the situation involved a mentally disturbed person armed with knives. What more did he need to know before arriving at the house?
My question: what is Goodman’s agenda? My provisional answer: he is trying to excuse an officer from the “grave consequence” of killing an elderly woman suffering from dementia by blaming everyone and everything else, especially her and dementia. How else to explain his concluding remark: “Watching the videos is a painful reminder of how we all failed Amelia Baca.” Rubbish. It did not remind me that I failed her; I did not fail her. It did not remind you that you failed her; you did not fail her. Watching flick or film showed “all of us” that the officer acted violently, fatally, and failed “all of us.”
Why does Goodman not get the moral facts right? Indeed, why does he get them wrong? His legal background should enable him to better analyze the facts, unless, of course, he is biased by a client or a pro bono case. He may support a civilian review board in Las Cruces and improved mental health care, but these two suggestions are disconnected unless he thinks that the board’s function is to refer officers for therapy. In a discussion of his headline topic, these irrelevancies distract from or mitigate the officer’s misconduct, and its “grave consequence.” The “Failure to act” was Goodman’s failures to criticize police dishonesty and misconduct, and to support police reform.
I have dissected Goodman’s editorial because people purportedly well-meaning often have agendas and biases which make it difficult to address emotion-laden mental health and police issues. His desire to excuse or exonerate the officer who killed Sra. Baca shows why efforts to reform the police often flounder and fail; apologists for the police like Goodman blame the victim, the system, and “all of us.” They divert attention from the facts about police performance foundational to reform and frustrate civic-minded approaches which respect the police who properly perform their public-safety functions yet demand corrections of police misconduct.
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