Winston Brooks deeply conflicted

APS Supt Winston Brooks has a decision to make.

His Chief of Police Steve Tellez has "... acknowledged to APS administration that he took one (box of very expensive ammunition) for personal use with his own weapon."

Now Brooks has to decide whether to keep him on salary (either at home or in a basement somewhere) or fire him.

It's a pretty straightforward choice and there is no apparent reason to delay it.  Delaying the decision unnecessarily would constitute malfeasance.

Firing him will cost money.  APS will argue that it's cheaper to keep him on administrative leave until his contract expires, than to fire him.

Tellez whispers in COO Brad Winter.

Firing him actually could cost a lot of money depending on what secrets Tellez is willing to reveal and what Winston Brooks and the Board are willing to do to keep them from being told.

An APS police chief without the opportunity to (threaten to) divulge secrets in public, hasn't much leverage left.  The leverage was last described in a Journal report quoting APS Chief Counsel Art Melendres.  He was quoting lawyer Sam Bregman who was representing former APS Police Chief Gil Lovato.  According to Melendres, Bregman said, if Lovato ever got to court, there wouldn't be a single senior APS administrator left standing.

The APS school board and senior administration have a personal interest in keeping Tellez out of court.

Marty Esquivel

Brooks, School Board President Marty Esquivel, and the rest of the complicit or complacent leadership, would like people to believe that keeping him on leave at $250 a day until the end of June, at a total expense to taxpayers of somewhere around $30K is simple prudence, nothing more.

They are considerably less prudent when they need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on their own legal problems, without oversight except by underling.

It is another of Brooks' conflicts; he is the highest ranking administrator who reviews his own spending on his own legal defense; hundreds of thousands of dollars on my complaints alone.   The Modrall firm alone makes well north of a million dollars a year litigating on behalf of senior administrators and school board members seeking personal exception to the law.  All without honest oversight.

The administrative review of Brooks' spending is done by a Brooks' subordinate; APS Director of Risk Management Mike Wilson and a subordinate of his.  Subordinate oversight is oxymoronic.

The APS School Board has abandoned their executive oversight obligation.  They are supposed to listen to "case analyses" of litigation involving administrators and board members, in order to provide oversight; to ensure that public resources are being spent appropriately.  The board's oversight over the administration is the people's only administrative oversight.

The APS School Board's abandonment of their obligation to provide executive oversight over administrative spending on their own legal defenses, is a betrayal of the public trust.

In any case, Brooks is conflicted and so far has managed to avoid defending, denying or even acknowledging the conflicts; the first step in addressing them.  An unaddressed conflict remains a conflict.

Brooks is conflicted by

• the obligation to fire Tellez and

• his personal need to keep the essential facts hidden from public knowledge. 

His conflicts remain unexamined by the investigative reporting teams of the establishment media, as does the lack of school board oversight over administrative litigation.

"It's a personnel matter"

According the Journal, APS Executive Director of Communications Monica Armenta said last week that, Tellez was put on leave for a "personnel matter" not a criminal matter.

Since when is the misappropriation of public property not a criminal matter to anyone except APS' spinmeister Armenta and the $750K a year public relations effort she leads?

The local media, without exception, steadfastly refuse to investigate and report upon the standards and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS.

Even if the truth is; there isn't one.

What if;

1.  APS administrative and executive standards of conduct are high enough to protect the public interests in the public schools.  And

2.  Accountability to those standards is swift and certain; there is due process for complaints over administrative or executive misconduct.

If it's true, why wouldn't they want to report it?

If it's true, wouldn't they kind of owe it to their friends
in the leadership of the APS, to report it?




photos Mark Bralley