Susan Morée talks to Nick Seibel, editor and publisher of Silver City Daily Press. Here is a transcript of their conversation.
Susan Morée:
So Nick, there's more fallout now from the incident that happened a few years ago with a rabbit. Tell us about it.
Nick Seibel:
Yeah, back in 2024, it was a group of then Grant County sheriff's deputies that were working on what's called Operation Stone Garden, which is federal funding where local police agencies can assist with border enforcement. And so this group of deputies were down by the border, and they came across a rabbit. One deputy tried to move the rabbit off of the road. Another deputy, after a confrontation, ended up killing the rabbit. This was caught on video, and it was released on social media, and it kind of became a nationwide story, certainly in some animal protection circles, something that people have continued to talk about. Ultimately, all of the deputies that were involved in that, including the deputy who reported it, ended up being fired by the sheriff's office. Now, the four of the former deputies that were involved in the rabbit incident have also been reported to the New Mexico Law Enforcement Certification Board, which is a requirement of state law. And basically, the board will then review the reports of the incident, including all of the legal documentation and everything else. The ultimate result of that could be the revocation of their law enforcement certifications in the state. It's been a big issue on social media around here recently because one of the officers that was involved is looking to move on in his law enforcement career and kind of has that hanging over his head at the moment. We talked to Grant County Sheriff Villanueva, who clarified that, you know, this is definitely not retaliation against anyone. It's just following the procedure and doing the things that you have to do in this kind of situation.
Susan Morée:
Okay. And the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission met recently. What was the result?
Nick Seibel:
Yeah, there's a lot of money out there that the state is in charge of. Back in 2004, Congress passed a law called the Arizona Water Settlements Act that kind of resolved conflicts among Arizona, New Mexico, and Native American nations on water in the Gila River, ultimately the Salt River and the Colorado River, the water in this part of the country. And one of the things that came out of that is New Mexico got a chunk of money, $66 million at the time. It's been invested since then and mostly not spent. And that money has now grown to more than $130 million. Under the terms of the act, it has to be spent on water projects in southwest New Mexico, the four counties of southwestern Mexico. That's Grant County, Luna County, Hidalgo County, and Catron County. So the ISC began spending that money last year. They had the pilot cycle one, which was basically funded design for water projects in the area, but it was only limited to design. Now they're finalizing the policy for pilot cycle two, which will guide the second round of spending that money, which they're looking to expand into actual construction of some projects. They've set a schedule of public listening sessions for later on this month. The first will be February 17th in Deming. Silver City and Grant County [meetings] will be on February 17th at 5.30 p.m. at the Grant County Business and Conference Center.
Susan Morée:
And you have some good news for us about COBRE's state reading results. Tell us about that.
Nick Seibel:
Yeah, kind of an interesting story there. The New Mexico Coalition of Educational Leaders kind of headed a study of reading results among students in New Mexico. There's sort of this constant narrative that New Mexico ranks at the bottom of educational performance nationwide. And what the coalition did was study a number of school districts around the state and their reading results. And they really found that, basically, New Mexico's reading standards are higher than those in a lot of other states around. So, if we measured ourselves by, say, Texas's standards, we would rank much better relative to other states. And so basically, what the study advocates is to use sort of an objective standard to compare states and reading results. And definitely not saying that New Mexico should dumb down its standards by any means, but just that the standards that we have adopted as a state really make us look bad and not necessarily deserved, which is a nice change for once.
Susan Morée:
It is indeed. And where can readers find more about these stories?
Nick Seibel:
Yeah, we've got more about all of these things, including a link to the white paper that came out of that study at scdailypress.com.
Susan Morée:
All right, thanks so much, Nick.
