An independent police oversight group presented their latest findings to the Las Cruces City Council after a review of the Las Cruces Police Department.
OIR Group looked into all internal investigations and investigations relating to external complaints that LCPD conducted in the first half of this year and had largely positive reviews.
The report says that LCPD has “strong self-evaluation and correction” and praised the department's transparency but also lists some recommendations to implement.
Among those recommendations, OIR wishes that LCPD uses the Force Review Cadre more often during investigations as well as have more thorough reasoning when an investigation is closed and improve customer service.
These recommendations stem from some of the findings that they came to after reviewing 21 investigations in the department.
OIR Group cited two police involved shootings that did not have the Force Review Cadre involved in the investigations. While OIR agreed with the findings of the department's investigations into these cases, they wished the Cadre was used.
In response to this recommendation, LCPD Police Chief Jeremy Story said that he finds that request fair but complicated to follow through on.
“The reality is that those incidents are reviewed more than any other incident is already. They go through multiple levels of review that are thorough and the Cadre is not a full time staff. It is ancillary duty. They have another job and then they probably have five or six other jobs on top of that that are ancillary duties so I have to be very thoughtful on what cases get reviewed and to make sure that there is a purpose that is not being accomplished already by some other mechanism and in this case I think it is already being accomplished and it becomes a check the box to me,” Story said.
However, OIR and LCPD did not see eye to eye on every case. One investigation centered around a phone call between a resident and an employee at LCPD. The phone call became argumentative but LCPD found that their employee was not in the wrong. OIR however found that remarks made by the employee could be seen as “escalatory, retaliatory and/or threatening.”
OIR Group also reviewed other cases including one involving a non-sworn employee removing evidence from storage. This incident led to LCPD changing how evidence storage is handled and now keeps currency that is evidence in a bank.
Another incident had to do with an officer having drugs, including fentanyl, in his patrol car alongside a wallet that belonged in evidence. LCPD noted that an inadequate background check was performed on the officer and they are working with the contractor to address those concerns.
The officer and the employee are no longer with the department.
