Dixon Award winners dis the NM FOG

The surrender of public records of investigations into public corruption and incompetence in the APS Police Department, link, is being obstructed by the leadership of the APS.














They, Winston Brooks and Marty Esquivel sit at the desks
where the buck stops for hiding public records from public knowledge.

They are claiming that every single word of every single investigation of the scandal in their police department is a "matter of opinion" and therefore not subject to surrender under the law.

The argument at the very best is no more than legal weaselry;
used to hide the ethically redacted truth from stakeholders
without fear of consequence; any fines and or penalties will be
paid by taxpayers, not by them.

Fortunately for the leadership of the APS and their lawyers,
there is no consequence for feigning ignorance of the law.

The Executive Director of the NM Foundation for
Open Government Sarah Welsh wrote a letter to

APS Executive Director of
Communications (and
Custodian of Public Records)
Rigo Chavez pointing directly to
the fallacies in their position.

As far as I know they have ignored her letter.

If they are in fact, ignoring her letter, they dissing the very folks who gave Esquivel a Dixon Award last year, and who will give Brooks one this year; the Dixon Award honors people who defend open government.

The irony will reach a crescendo next month when Brooks
stands up at an awards banquet and accepts the formerly
prestigious award for fighting for transparency in government,
after spending his day hiding public records of corruption
and incompetence in his Praetorian Guard; a publicly
funded private police force; accredited by no one, certificated
by no one, and accountable to no one, except Winston Brooks
and Marty Esquivel.

Neither can summon the character and the courage to tell he truth, about the corruption in their Police Department, nor about independent audits, or about executive and administrative role modeling of the Student Standards of Conduct, nor about the denial of due process to hundreds of whistle blowers.

Yet both have stood up, or will stand up, and accept an award
in honor of the character and courage they have (supposedly)
manifest in their fight for honest accountability in government.

The Dixon Award for Abject Hypocrisy;
somebody must be spinning in his grave.

The media will be there of course, to report upon the award,
not upon the scandal.



photos Mark Bralley