© 2025 KRWG
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

City of Las Cruces Must Institute Civilian Police Oversight Board Immediately



 

Commentary:

"Never let a good crisis go to waste." We must heed these immortal words by Winston Churchill and establish a Las Cruces civilian police oversight board immediately because we are still in crisis with our Police Department. Waves of police shootings, lawsuit settlements, a dramatic rise in total violent crime this year-to-date based on actual Las Cruces Police data, and increasing allegations of misconduct still plague our Police. In fact, the recent March 11th 2024 OIR Group Las Cruces Police auditing report presented to the City and Council noted a marked rise in allegations. Echoing and building on the important and good work of Peter Goodman, Earl Nissen, Bobbie Green, Michael Hays, and others over recent years (and under a different Mayor and Council I note) we simply must not let the opportunity to finally address our Police department issues slip away by failing to implement a civilian police oversight board.

 

While mixed outcomes can result from them, scholars and experts advise that civilian boards can be beneficial in many ways. For example, Olugbenga Ajilore of the Center for American Progress as published in the Scholars Strategy Network said "Civilian oversight promises more equitable policing because it is a process by which non-police community members can regularly provide input into police department operations" and "Civilian oversight boards are not a catch-all solution to excessive police force, but they can help to hold police accountable and reduce instances of the unnecessary use of force." And I agree.

 

For years, a former Mayor, Councilmembers, and Police Chiefs have pushed back on this idea by saying that the work of OIR, an outside Police auditing group based in California, is sufficient. But it's not because it's still paid by and reports to the Police Department automatically leading to a seeming conflict of interest, because it only analyzes certain things, because it's not clear if all the things recommended by OIR over the years have actually been implemented or not, because it's not composed of civilians here in our community, and because it's just not here in our community so it lacks locality.

 

Take Codes Enforcement under the Police Department which is particularly troubled and ineffective by, as carefully documented by the author, showing a multi-year pattern of repeatedly closing basic workload issues without doing anything on them nor accomplishing any outcome. While Codes may be unpopular it ensures that we all have a safe, clean, healthy, and orderly City and society around us so its work is vital to everyone's well-being. Because new management and reforms are desperately needed at Codes to make sure that its important work actually gets done a civilian board can make sure that this actually happens for the betterment of our City and our society.

 

So what can we all do right now? Well, make your desire for a civilian police oversight board known to the Mayor and your Councilmember as soon as possible; their contacts can be readily found on the City website. We all want a professional and trustworthy Las Cruces Police Department that best serves the public. But right now, the Police force is very young and inexperienced and many residents may have experienced unprofessional or even worse conduct including injury and death. Examples would be arrest without cause, rude or discourteous conduct, search & seizure law violations, mishandled property, unsafe operation of vehicle or equipment, excessive force (the focus of many people here), improper conduct, failure to act (a common one), no report filed (another common one), failure to follow standard administrative procedures (common), and or other things. Beyond the need for a civilian police oversight board, we do have an immediate way to try and rectify these situations and attain more professionalism by and trust in our Police Department by filing official complaints with their organization at https://lascruces.gov/safety/police-department/file-a-complaint-or-submit-a-compliment/ so I encourage everyone to file complaints as needed. Don't be intimidated by the Police or put off by the form or by the process and know that by making needed complaints you may be really helping to fix things and make them better for everyone here.

 

Thanks to the previous good work of Goodman, Nissen, Green, Hays, and others our local elected officials have been hearing about the need for a civilian police oversight board for years now- but it's up to us to push them to finally make it happen.

 
Tom Reavey Jr, MBA, Las Cruces

The opinions of Tom Reavey Jr. are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of KRWG Public Media or NMSU.