A recent Searchlight New Mexico article (27 Mar) by Joshua Bowling and Vanessa G. Sánchez begins:
It was just after 6.30 one evening last April when Las Cruces police officer Jared Cosper responded to a mental health call. The family of Amelia Baca, a 75-year-old grandmother with dementia, had called 911, saying she appeared to be off her medication and was threatening them. They needed help.
Cosper, trained in crisis intervention, according to a subsequent lawsuit, arrived at the Bacas’ front door and instructed family members to step outside. Police body camera video shows Baca’s granddaughter thanking the officer and asking him to “be very careful with her”.
The elderly woman – who spoke only Spanish – came to the door, a kitchen knife in each hand.
“Drop the fucking knife,” Cosper shouted. As the family begged and screamed in protest, he shot and killed her.
Now, nearly a year after Baca’s tragic death, Las Cruces has launched an “alternative response” program, designed to send social workers and paramedics instead of armed officers to the scenes of 911 calls for mental health crises, drug overdoses and threats of suicide.
Because of its republication in The Guardian, an international news publication, this story gives Las Cruces the prominence which it deserves for its police force, which operates without civilian oversight or police leadership. Regrettably, the story omits even a passing mention of the state’s legal system which, for nearly a year after the killing, has taken no action whatsoever except to shuffle papers and shift responsibility. Las Cruces Chief of Police Miguel Dominguez to Dona Ana County District Attorney Gerald Byers of the Third Judicial District to New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez—all have conspired to avoid any action to hold the killer accountable. No action is foreseeable.
Like many voters, I was persuaded that Torrez was the right man—Democrat, liberal, even Progressive—for the right job at the right time. Wrong. The Baca case may not be the most important one in his office, but it is probably the most visible one. His inaction after three months in office on a case already eight months old suggests that he thinks it unimportant and best left to inaction and, he apparently hopes, forgetfulness. But an article with statewide and international readership which begins with this story suggests that Baca’s killing is a touchstone of the clear and present danger which police officers present to citizens.
I am all for alternative responses to calls for assistance in situations involving mental health episodes, drug overdoses, and suicide threats. I am also all for not only equal protection under the law, but also equal application of the law. My concern is that any alternative responses will still require police support, and, if police officers continue to operate with legal impunity, not to mention legal immunity, they will continue to kill those who require medical, not criminal, treatment.
So I am less than impressed that City Council—its six women Councilors subservient to the dictates of its male Mayor—takes no action about police misconduct but takes action—passes an “‘alternative response’ program”—which purports to prevent it. It should be possible but seems impossible for these elected officials to pursue more than one approach at a time to issues of public safety. For, when this program fails, City Council will blame its implementation, not the police—a misdirection which will ensure continued police violence with harmful, if not fatal, consequences—and have to start from scratch.
I doubt that New Mexico is losing population because of the abject quality of its legal system. But the stench of incompetence and corruption in other areas of government services as well does nothing to staunch the hemorrhaging of people seeking a better environment for living and livelihood. As they—the better and the brighter—escape the Land of Entrapment, they leave behind many parasitic immigrants, both retirees and refugees; impoverished natives; and an ineffectual, dispersed few who want to support a dynamic economy or a robust education.
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