Scott Brocato:
All right, let's start with the first story: El Paso police arrested city rep candidate Arturo Alluin on suspicion of domestic violence in 2022, but he said the case was expunged this year.
Bob Moore:
Yeah, so as part of our regular background check of any candidates we look at--criminal history, lawsuit history, police records and things like that--and in looking at the candidates for District 8, which kind of covers the West Side and South El Paso and City Council, we discovered some pretty serious allegations against Arturo Alluin that stem back to 2021. Alluin is the owner of several restaurants in El Paso. He's a first-time political candidate, 35 years old. The allegations in the police report are that he slapped, pushed and choked his at the time girlfriend in 2021 at an El Paso hotel while they were inside a family bathroom outside a bar at the hotel. She filed the complaint with police. They went out and interviewed her using open records laws. We obtained the police reports, some video recordings the police made of the interview with the victims, and it's really quite disturbing. And our reporter, Priscilla Totiapungprasert, also talked with the victim who no longer lives in El Paso, and she kind of recounted some of this. So she did eventually ask that the charges be dropped. She now says that was under pressure from Alluin. So it's the kind of thing that voters should know about.
And it gets a little complicated because Alluin says that he filed for what's known as an expunction order, which means that all of the court and law enforcement records are destroyed or kept from public access. He won't say much more. He wouldn't give us a copy of the order. He wouldn't respond to any of the allegations. He was just very angry that we were going to report this.
So we double-checked with the police department who provided us that the information under public records laws. They say they have no such expunction order. But in talking with other agencies like the DA's office, the county clerk, the sheriff's office, it does look like, although nobody can say it because that kind of defeats purpose of the expunction order, it does look like something was issued at some point. This is a process that can take up to a year to complete. So that may be part of the issue here. But I think Alluin, in sort of protesting that people aren't supposed to know about this, is kind of missing the point. Very serious allegations that speak directly to the character of somebody seeking the public to vote. So it's a disturbing story. The woman was clearly traumatized. It's a tough story to read. I think it's important for voters to understand the background here.
Scott Brocato:
And moving along to Flock cameras: El Paso police abruptly halted the Flock camera program after Governor Abbott paused funding as scrutiny grows.
Bob Moore:
Yeah, so these Flock cameras are controversial all around the country, and they're basically automated license plate readers that law enforcement has used for a number of reasons, often to try to track down stolen cars and track down other criminal suspects. But there are a lot of privacy concerns that are raised by this too, and a lot of communities have abandoned these. There was an effort in El Paso earlier this year to end the contract with Flock. But the city council voted six to two to continue it after the police chief and other law enforcement leaders said it was a valuable tool for them.
But that kind of all changed in the last few weeks. Governor Abbott, who's kind of pivoted on a number of issues that have created some controversy, kind of surprisingly to some, announced that state resources could no longer be spent on these cameras because of the privacy concerns. Governor Abbott is usually very aligned with law enforcement, which are very big fans of these cameras. But because of some of the civil liberties issues that have raised, he decided to pause state funding. And all of El Paso's cameras were funded by state grants. And so the city police had no option but to discontinue it because there's no other funding available.
They're leaving the cameras up in case funding reappears. So this is probably a debate that will continue sometime into the future. The police say among other things that not having these cameras is going to cause them to have to divert other resources and it means things like police response times will take longer according to them. But a lot of civil liberties folks really are happy with this decision that there's a little bit less intrusion into people's lives as they're driving around the community.
Scott Brocato:
And finally a story about local governments owing the city of El Paso a million and a half dollars for animal services.
Bob Moore:
Yeah, so the city of El Paso runs the animal shelter here. There are no other animal shelters available. So they take in stray animals on behalf of other communities and bill them back for it. After 2024, the city raised its rates and then also lifted a cap that they had. They would previously only charge for the first few number of days that they held an animal. Now they're charging for every day. They say they have to cover their costs. It's just an explosion of abandoned animals in the El Paso community right now. And this is causing strain on a lot of budgets for some of the smaller communities. San Elizario, in particular, really small town, has a very tiny budget, I think, of just like a couple million dollars. And they're having to pay tens of thousands of dollars to the city to take care of these and the city of El Paso to take care of these animals. And they say that they can't continue to do that, but they also don't have any options other than to let the dogs and cats continue to roam, which is not a realistic option.
One hope on the horizon: the county passed a bond issue a couple of years ago to build an animal shelter for outside the El Paso city limits, but that's not going to come online until 2029 at the earliest, and that will come with cost too. So this issue with abandoned animals is one of the most emotional issues in El Paso for obvious reasons. And it's also becoming quite a financial issue too, and we're going to keep tracking that.
Scott Brocato:
All right. And where can folks read about that and other stories that we've been discussing?
Bob Moore:
Stay up to date with all the important news in our region at elpasomatters.org.