Acting Chief acting derelict

I was not APS acting Chief of Police Steve Gallegos' only problem yesterday.

There was a crisis in progress, I was told, of such magnitude that there was no one on the entire APS police force, except the ladies at the reception desk, who could free themselves long enough to tell me why I was being denied access to legitimate business in their Employee Benefits Office.

Though Executive Director of Communications / Crisis Manager Monica Armenta was nowhere to be seen, during or since;
there was in fact a bonafide crisis. Five schools had been shut down because there was a kid (flashing?) a gun and hanging around one of them, link.

Five schools, more or less. It turns out that many classrooms don't have working all-calls, and aren't in the loop. They might never have discovered their lives were in danger, except for the number of resourceful students who spend their days non-stop texting pretty much everybody but the leadership of the APS.

Oddly, no one in APS' Communications Dept, showed up on TV.
Instead, they wheeled out COO Brad Winter to assure parents
and community members that everything is fine because
they practice active shooter drills in schools all the time.

In charge; Deputy Chief Steve Gallegos.

He was in charge, I was told,
because the actual Chief, Steve
Tellez, like Elvis, was no longer
in the building.

That subject came up when I
asked who I could talk to about
the unlawful order they were
enforcing, denying my access
to their castle keep.

I had legitimate business. I was behaving appropriately. I was in violation of no law, no regulation, no ethic, not even Marty Esquivel's unlawful restraining order. I did nothing wrong; I will stand on the public record; security cameras, recorders, and eyewitness testimony.

Though they were up to their eyeballs in a crisis, APS acting Chief Steve Gallegos found the time to walk clear across the building, personally, to harass and eject me.

Admittedly, I only had half his attention. He was holding a cell
phone to his ear most of the time.

Which means of course, whoever was on the other end of the
calls he was fielding, people dealing with a kid with a gun,
had half his attention as well.

I would argue the students, staff and community members in
those schools and whose lives were at stake, should have had
his full attention.

Both Tellez and Gallegos have been voted no confidence by the
people who in situations like these, hold their hands closer to
their guns than their cell phones.

Gallegos, a double dipper, probably pulls down north of $100K;

to protect children from gunmen and administrators from
whistleblowers, both at the same time.




Tellez photo Mark Bralley
Gallegos, Armenta photo ched macquigg