Nothing changes; APD will continue to hide the truth

In the Journal this morning, link.  My goad was got when I read;

Police declined to comment on the arrest, saying that it was a “personnel matter.” 

and

They also would not comment generally on police training relating to seizing cellphones or striking suspects in the groin.

On the first; the phrase "personnel matter" is a term used by politicians and public servants who have a truth to tell and don't want to.  They can't just say; I don't want to tell you the truth, so they say, I "can't" tell you the truth and thereby deflect the blame.  It's not something they want to do, it's something they have to do.

There are some truths about the public interests and politicians and public servants public service that should remain secret from public knowledge.  There are good and ethical reasons to secret some of the truth from public knowledge.

Never mind those truths.  Never mind the "good" truths as well.  We pay public information officers tens of millions of dollars every year, to tell us the truth that makes politicians and public servants they work under, look good.

The truth in point is the truth that enjoys no real exception under open government laws, and which makes a particular politician or public servant appear to be incompetent or corrupt; the inconvenient truth.  At that point, the law allows them to self-redact the record of their own public service by claiming "personnel matter".  "It's a personnel matter" is the equivalent of calling "King's X", link, for politicians and public servants who are about to get caught hiding public records from public knowledge illegally.

The fundamental flaw in open government law is the assumption that the truth belongs to the government and the people, in order to see it, must first prove their right to see it (in court).

"Proving" that right in court is process that is tilted heavily in favor of politicians and public servants and their need to hide records and close meetings.  Not the least of their advantages is unlimited budgets for litigation in their own interests and lawyers who are bound only by the same (lack of) ethics as their clients.

Witness the money APS Supt Winston Brooks and the board are spending right now trying to hide public records of felony criminal misconduct in the leadership of their police force.  Every word of every finding of every investigation of felony public corruption and incompetence in the APS is still secret because the law allows them to claim "personnel matter", spend hundreds of thousands of tax dollars in litigation, and then suffer no penalty personally when the records are finally produced.

It is time to redefine the exceptions to open records and open meetings.  That redefinition being the prerogative of the people, not of their servants.

It is time to restate the premise; the truth about the spending of the people's power and resources belongs to the people.  All of it.  It is up to the people to decide how the record is redacted and by whom; certainly not by the people whose record it is.

As to;

They also would not comment generally on police training relating to seizing cellphones or striking suspects in the groin.

"No comment" is not an acceptable answer to a legitimate question about the public interests.

There is probably an exception under the law that allows them hide public records regarding training police officers to kick people in the balls and then delete any video or photographs they might have taken of themselves being kicked in the balls.

It's a pretty important question;

why won't the leadership of the Albuquerque Police Department comment on whether they are training officers to keep their hands off people's cameras and contents?

except that they are not?

In particularly disturbing; the lack of reassurance a person can really feel, when an APD cop assures them; the encounter is being captured on the officer’s lapel camera.

No head ever rolled over the widespread administrative failure to enforce APD's own policy on lapel camera use.

If there is a singular universal aspect in culture's of incompetence and corruption, it is that heads don't roll over oversight failure.

Accountability and shit roll together and
they roll down hill.