"Arrested" again

There will be some quibbling I suppose over whether I was, in fact, "arrested" yesterday at Eldorado High School before the Gubernatorial Debate.

This would be the eighth time that I have been arrested by APS' Praetorian Guard, wikilink, dba APS Police Department, link.

I have never been charged with any crime. No charges of any kind have ever been filed as the result of any of these illegal arrests. I have never done anything that I would not be proud to do again in front of any of the many thousands of students to whom I taught the Pillars of Character Counts!, link.

Typically, I am only arrested for long enough to deprive me of my rights to free speech and to petition my government at a Public Forum during APS school board meetings.

I had every right to be at Eldorado High School for the debate; I am a member of the press, and I was a ticket holder.

I had done nothing to justify my arrest; I had violated no rule, and certainly violated no law.

The arresting Officer, one B Rohlfs, informed me that he was following orders that came from APS Supt Winston Brooks personally; not directly but through an intermediary who he repeatedly refused to name.

The leadership of the APS has their own little publicly funded private police force. It is accredited by no one; it is certificated by no one; it reports only to, and directly to, those who interests it protects.

It is currently embroiled in a cover up of itself. In early 2007, the Journal reported on corruption in the APS Police Department, link. Despite evidence of felony criminal misconduct involving senior APS administrators, including in the Police Department itself; it investigated itself. Despite the blatant appearance of a conflict of interest, it is the only agency of law enforcement that has investigated the corruption.

It has been 3-1/2 years and they are still "investigating". Statutes of limitation have, conveniently, expired in the interim.

Brooks as APS' CAO, is responsible for hiding from public knowledge, the report of an independent investigation of the corruption that was conducted by a private investigator. In response to a request for public records asking for an ethically redacted version of the report, APS/Brooks response is to claim the entire report is a "matter of opinion" and not subject to disclosure under the Inspection of Public Records Act.

I would ask for help from the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government, which typically takes exception to this kind of sleazy dodge; but I suspect they will be too busy planning the banquet during which they will give Brooks the Dixon Award for transparency in government.

The granting of the award presumably enjoys the support of a number of members of the NMFOG Board of Directors including School Board President and Open Government lawyer Marty Esquivel, School Board member Paula Maes, who once said she would never agree to any audit that individually named corrupt and/or incompetent APS administrators, Modrall lawyer Pat Rogers, and Journal editor Kent Walz.

Coincidentally, the Journal steadfastly refuses to investigate and report upon the cover up of the corruption in the APS Police Department in particular, and upon the ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS in general.