Investigation into EPPD reveals toxic environment for female officers, run-off elections for school board seats, and a rideshare driver shares his love of books. Below is a transcript of Bob's conversation with KRWG's KC Counts:
KC Counts:
Let's begin, Bob, with the reporting you did on some of the experiences of women police officers in the El Paso Police Department.
Bob Moore:
Yeah, I think first, it's important to note that our reporter on the story, Victoria Rossi, spent seven months investigating this story. You know, dozens of open records requests and she built relationships with women police officers who opened up to her. So, it's just a lot of really solid reporting by Victoria and what she found is a culture in the El Paso Police Department that's kind of chocked full of misogyny and sexual harassment, and just not a healthy place to be a woman police officer. We found all kinds of really disturbing individual stories. One woman Detective who was filmed by a police officer in a consensual sexual encounter - she had not consented to being filmed - and then the officer shared it in the department and she kind of came under attack for ruining this guy's career and never felt she was getting the support from people in the command structure. Other women talked about ongoing sexual harassment issues, you know, sexually charged language in the workplace, and even some male officers have acknowledged the real problematic nature of this culture. I think it's one of the most disturbing stories we produced over the time we've been publishing and one that certainly calls for a lot of attention from city leadership. This has been allowed to fester for decades, literally, as Victoria's reporting shows.
KC Counts:
I can tell you, Bob, when I saw the headline and read the story, I think my jaw was just kind of on the ground while I was reading through that, so it will definitely be interesting to see how the city responds and we'll stay in touch about that.
Bob Moore:
And to just warn people, the details are very, very disturbing and they're very upsetting, I think, so people have to be prepared for that and be aware of it.
KC Counts:
And let's move on now to runoff elections again in El Paso. It seems like there were just runoff elections. It's already time to go back to the polls.
Bob Moore:
So this is the runoff elections to settle 3 school board seats in which no candidate got a majority back in May when the first round of voting occurred. Election Day is this Saturday. Two of the seats are in El Paso Independent School District and one of the seats is in Ysleta. Turn out has been, in early voting, has been very light, which is quite common in these kinds of elections. So, a small number of voters are going to wind up electing people to really important positions, and we're starting to see something that's popped up in a lot of other cities, which is kind of the national politicization of local school board races, and we're seeing a lot of, like, one of the attacks that we're seeing in that run off is one of the school board seats. One school board member said that her opponent voted for Proposition K, which was the climate charter in the last election, which makes her too liberal for the school board seat so that's not a surprising development, but, you know, it has nothing whatsoever to do with how effective somebody would be in managing a school district; But that's kind of where, where we're beginning to settle in, so very important elections coming up that the turnout is going to be really low.
KC Counts:
OK. And moving on to a heartwarming story about a rideshare driver who learned English and I guess he really got hooked on books, huh?
Bob Moore:
Yeah, and so this one of those neat little stories and I want to credit here. We came across this story from a CNN reporter named Ed Lavandera, who was here in town to cover the end of Title 42. And he came across this rideshare driver and just thought it makes a great story. They passed along the tip to us. The driver's name is Armando Esparza. He's originally from Juarez but has moved over here. He was really trying to improve his English and one of the things he started doing is he carries books in the back seat of his car, and he doesn't push them on anybody or anything, but if somebody asks, he tells him to feel free to take one of the books, and there are a range of books, some classics, some scientific texts and things like that. His only request is that you finish reading the book within 5 days and pass it on to somebody else. So, he's kind of created this volunteer book share effort. It’s an example of how creative people in El Paso can be sometimes in trying to promote literacy in our community.
KC Counts:
You know, I have to say, I'm not in a ride share that often, but whenever I am, I always make it a point to engage the driver in conversation. They have the most interesting stories. The last rideshare driver I was with was from Nigeria and had just gotten his masters at NMSU and was up in Albuquerque. So how about that for a small world?
Bob Moore:
Yeah, go Aggies.
KC Counts:
OK. Well, let's see if we can take a few seconds, Bob, you're talking to us from Washington, DC. Give us just, a picture, if you will, of what that air quality is like to move through.
Bob Moore:
Well, I'm out here for a conference so, and I'm doing some other meetings while I'm out here, and for the last couple of days, we've really seen this pretty thick smoke enveloping the city from these Canadian wildfires. I was about a mile from the capital and you could barely make out the capital building. So walking around today, a lot of people are wearing masks that I hadn't seen since COVID-19; And there's real concerns about the air quality here, so I'm trying to be careful too.
KC Counts:
Thank you so much for the information. Have a great weekend.
