APS - media relationship deteriorating

We are entering the second week of APS top cop Chief Steve Tellez' suspension.  APS is winning the public relations battle.  They have managed for an entire week, to say nothing and have nothing said.  I point in contrast, to the media coverage of Brooks several recent gaffes, which went on for days and days.

Despite the apparent disinterest the current scandal in the leadership of APS' publicly funded private police force, at least a few local reporters are apparently picking at threads.  One of them will be the first to expose the corruption, all of the rest of them will be among the last.  One of them will be the last.

I understand APS' Executive Director of Communications Monica Armenta is not taking it well.

Whatever has happened here, the people whose power was abused, whose resources were misappropriated, have a right to the ethically redacted about what happened.

Armenta and the "communications" arm of the APS have a moral and legal obligation to be "reasonably specific" in their truth telling.  That phrase comes from the NM Open Meetings Act.

Instead, local reporters are being stonewalled.  One can imagine that is not sitting well with those of them who take their informing the democracy obligations the most seriously.

This distance between the press and government is appropriate; the press, politicians and public servants should not be on a first name basis.

Unfortunately, public information officers control the press' access to government.  They are gatekeepers standing between politicians and public servants and the press and their questions about the public interests including their public service.

It is a ridiculous amount of authority to give to someone who isn't accountable to the people.

Armenta has usurped the authority,
(or had that authority handed to her
by someone else who usurped it),
to decide who is and who isn't "the press"; a question that is more appropriately determined at the level of the Supreme Courts.

Not only does she get to decide who is and is not the press, she gets to decide which one them she will talk to.  She decides who among the press, is entitled to the constitutional protection of their human right to be "the press", based on whether she likes them.

Without "like you" access, the press will be hard put to find out what's really going on with nearly a fourth of the state's entire budget.

They will have to start fighting for access.  I'm told that they do fight for access.   Frankly I don't see any blood or sweat wetting the ground anywhere.  I don't see them suing for Caswell I.

I was assured that KRQE asked for Caswell's findings in 2007, immediately after APS reneged on their promise to release them.  If they got them, they're hiding them too.

If they didn't get them, they haven't sued for them.  They walked away from the public records and their obligation to expose them to public knowledge.

Coincidentally,  APS School Board President Marty Esquivel is KRQE' lawyer.

Esquivel has an interest in hiding the truth about incompetence and corruption in the leadership of the APS Police.

Why would he not use his influence over the people who run KRQE?

Why wouldn't APS Supt Winston Brooks back his play?

Why wouldn't Monica  Armenta back up Brooks?

Why won't "the press" demand an explanation from Winston Brooks;

Why won't you surrender an ethically redacted version of the findings of investigations into public corruption and incompetence in the leadership of the APS Police?

"Why", not how, the "how" we know about; spend tens of thousands of dollars in litigation in federal court to try to create an exemption to the Inspection of Public Records Act that does not exist.

Why do they need to hide an ethically redacted version of the truth?

Why won't "the press"; the Journal, KRQE, KOAT, and KOB sue to see Caswell I and all the other findings APS is hiding?

Why won't they report that they are having to sue to see them?

Those are questions that need to be asked of managing editors and news directors.

The press has an opportunity to step back from the cozy relationship created by Monica Armenta and start playing hardball in the public interests.

Let's hope they suit up.




photo Mark Bralley