The Obscenity of Scott Greenwood and Tom Streicher: (Yet Another) Scandal in Alburquerque

"We're not starving, we're just hungry..."

Of all people in the United States these two characters from the Buckeye State, Scott Greenwood and Tom Streicher, somehow got themselves hired in Albuquerque at $350 per hour plus expenses. (Just look at them, it's ludicrous! If we're making a nasty porno, at least give us some eye candy!) Their billings, already in the six figures, were "earned" presiding over the cut and paste job that is the DOJ Consent Decree on unconstitutional policing by the APD (27 fatalities, many of them unarmed, just since 2010). 

But $350 an hour is apparently not sufficient remuneration for the duo and they got caught scraping the bottom of the commonweal's cookie jar, scratching for every last green chile flavored crumb. One can only imagine how mortified Council Members Ken Sanchez, Isaac Benton, Brad Winter, Diane Gibson, Trudy Jones and Don Harris, who voted in favor of the contract, must be for their lack of discernment. They have to be thinking, What other foxes have we naively let into the chicken coop even after being repeatedly warned during public comments by the people who saw through these two?!

And what kind of contract could CABQ possibly have approved wherein these kinds of pecuniary abuses are not immediate grounds for its dissolution? We don't have the final tally yet, but under New Mexico statutes: 30-16-1. Larceny.  D. "Whoever commits larceny when the value of the property stolen is over five hundred dollars ($500) but not more than two thousand five hundred dollars ($2,500) is guilty of a fourth degree felony." A defendant convicted of a fourth degree felony in New Mexico faces up to eighteen months in prison and a fine up to $5,000. Shall I call Corrections Secretary Marcantel and reserve a couple of luxury suites in the prison in Clovis just in case?

KRQE broke the story; not sure why.

By now it's dawning on everyone in the Land of Enchantment not enchanted into a stuporous coma that these DOJ Consent Decrees are fabulously enriching business opportunities for the "experts" who jimmy up some expertise. In this case Greenwood's past gig at the ACLU, cynically trading on its brand for personal gain, and Streicher's tenure as a police chief whose own department was the object of DOJ scrutiny for the killing of 15 Black men in five years, many of them unarmed. Yep, if I read this summary of his chiefdom right those are his qualifications--a pile of corpses and a record of resistance to departmental reform. 

If Albuquerque's lucky it'll get some of the money back after the audit, and if Greenwood and Streicher are lucky they'll somehow avoid being indicted by District Attorney Brandenburg for theft from the people of New Mexico. But in all likelihood the conditions that led to the too-tempting-to-resist spending spree will not be altered, and the people of Albuquerque will remain on their knees tithing heavily to the well-established Church of Endemic Corruption posing as the Chapel of Anomalous Malfeasance. 

A buckeye. 'Nuff said.

I wrote, just this morning, to Councilman Brad Winter to see if he would be demanding an apology for the rip-offs from the Buck Eye Boyz Gang, and to learn if he's planning on proposing setting reasonable expense guidelines for outside consultants. I'll happily publish his response when it arrives sometime after the end of the Anthropocene.

Another question I asked Winter was whether the mounting pile of evidence of bad stewardship of taxpayer resources is concerning to him vis a vis Albuquerque's bond ratings in the capital markets. But I might've saved the pixels. After speaking with a press officer in Moody's NYC office, Albuquerque has little to fear from the bond rating agencies. They're looking solely at factors that could have an impact on the city's ability to repay its debts in bond instruments over 20 to 30 years.  

Even money damages from wrongful death and injury lawsuits in the tens of millions are a mere rounding error in its $870 million annual budget. And while good governance is one of Moody's metrics, I was advised that they never give prescriptive advice. Poof went my fantasy of having our corporate overlords rein in a governmental body unable to hold itself accountable, even a teensy little bit. 

I also wrote to Mister (gotta spell it out for him) Scott Greenwood himself and offered space here for him and Streicher to say how very sorry they are. Not just for getting caught, but for flaunting their white male privilege and class entitlement in a decadent display of Gimme!

An uncanny resemblance to that ole Buckeye Scott Greenwood stuffing his face.

Additionally, in their self-selected role as the people's guardians of the DOJ Consent Decree process I also wrote to APD Forward, specifically to ACLU-NM Exec. Dir. Peter Simonson in his capacity as spokesman, to learn what its position on the expense scandal might be. I had hoped to find an excoriating statement on their website (it's been ten days since the scandal broke), and really don't know to what to attribute the group's silence on the matter.  It reflects so very poorly on them. With watchdogs like these...

Frankly, I don't expect to hear back from Mister Simonson because I may have pissed him off months ago in a little listserv contretemps when in so many words I expressed the concern that he himself may be lusting after one of these plummy consultant gigs in some other poor unsuspecting American city being held hostage by a militarized police force. All he had to do is say he wouldn't touch a gig like that with a 10-foot pole...but to everyone's disappointment, he didn't.

And if it's the case that he's upset with me for even suggesting that such a future lucrative possibility may be motivating and influencing his actions and inaction in the here and now, well...c'est la vie.

Unlike Moody's, Written Word, Spoken Word does offer prescriptive advice, even unsolicited!

Perhaps Ken Ellis, Steve Torres, Mike Gomez, or other of the family members of APD victims who are part of the organization and whose moral authority blankets APD Forward in a patina of conscience, might wish to secure a public statement from everyone on the legal team that they will not seek such lucrative consultancies using APD Forward as a launching pad. It would feel a lot cleaner.

This comes to mind because I'm sure I'm not the only reader who felt some measure of disdain for the tepid and obfuscating  APD Forward Analysis (for Dummies?) of the 106-page agreement. In its initial iteration anyway, the APD Forward legal team offered up bullet points and "Bottom Lines" that give little of the sense of what a crushing disappointment and betrayal of good faith this document is.

Bottom Line: Though they get kudos for slogging through the 106 pages of info dump in the document that now governs the APD reform process, APD Forward pulled a heckuva lot of punches in conveying the document's significance in maintaining the status quo in power relations.

 So different in tone and substance from La Jicarita's David Correia (one of the Burque 13) who concluded in his analysis:

"If there was one thing that no one believed, it was that APD could police itself. And yet, the idea that the solution to APD is APD is at the very heart of this Agreement. And DOJ’s faith in APD’s ability and willingness to police itself produces its share of absurdities.

Consider the section that actually “requires” that APD officers self-report their misconduct “to a supervisor or directly to the Internal Affairs Bureau.” Or the part of the Agreement that now requires that APD officers carry officer-misconduct complaint forms wherever they go. “Officer, once you’re done violating my constitutional rights, could you pass me one of those complaint forms in your pocket?” Or the section titled “Community and Problem-Oriented Policing” that actually includes the following sentence: “APD shall ensure that officers are familiar with the geographic areas they serve.” Or the fact that the Agreement leaves it up to APD to train its officers in “leadership, ethics and interpersonal skills.” I laughed out loud so often while reading this Agreement that my daughter, in the other room, thought I was watching a sitcom.

The women in the first row--Nora Anaya, Barbara Grothus and Kathy Brown--3 of the Burque 13, watching CABQ unanimously pass the Agreement negotiated by Streicher and Greenwood.The Burque 13 went to jail, incurred injuries, lost income, faced ridicule, and are still not out from under the legal wrangling with the City, while the Buckeye gang gobbles down $53 steak dinners on their dime. Mike Gomez, whose son Alan was shot in the back by by APD officer Sean Wallace (back row), is a portrait of parental anguish.

But the Agreement is no sitcom; it’s a horror show. In section after section, the DOJ identifies a problem and then charges the very agency responsible for creating that problem with coming up with a plan to fix it. The DOJ noted profound deficiencies in Internal Affairs investigations of officer-involved use of force. This Agreement “solves” that problem by requiring that APD “ensure that investigations of officer misconduct complaints shall be as thorough as necessary to reach reliable and complete findings.” The Agreement describes new requirements for crisis intervention training, requires new processes for officer misconduct investigation, and defines new oversight responsibilities for brass. but in every case—in every case—leaves it up to APD to achieve those goals. Each obligation or requirement in the Agreement is followed with a sentence that includes the language “APD shall develop and implement” or “APD shall revise and update its policies and procedures ” or “APD shall develop objective criteria for.” The only evidence that DOJ was involved in drafting this Agreement is the fact that much of it is plagiarized from other consent decrees. Otherwise, it reads as though drafted by APD itself.

We live in a city with a police department that routinely violates the constitutional rights of the people it’s charged to serve. It kills and brutalizes people at an alarming rate and with a frightening precision and it’s been doing it for decades. And, after this Agreement, there’s no end in sight."

At the End of a Long and Lawless Day, Burque Media Represents in Ferguson

Article and images (unless noted) by Frances Madeson

New Mexico is love-bombing Ferguson.

One of the most positive concrete outcomes of the police brutality movement in Albuqerque this season is the founding of a community media outlet whose focus is media justice. With all due respect, we in the activism community refer to the local corporate paper as The Albuquerque Urinal, and the alternative press while seeming to engage with many issues of concern also manages to stop well short of providing information and perspectives that would fundamentally challenge the status quo. Into this gaping void Burque Media, whose tagline is Countering Lies, Exposing Truths, was born.

Image by Dinah Vargas. "A visual exploration of what it means to be from somewhere."

Along with the state flag, the Desert Spirits banner is representing New Mexico on the ground in Ferguson, Missouri this weekend.

"I almost feel like I'm going to war, like it's a duty," Dinah Vargas, co-founder of Burque Media Productions told me about the impulse to join the fray in Ferguson. "The violence, the threat is very real. But Albuquerque's still in this. No one said we're out. I feel called to go."

Partners in Media Justice--Dinah Vargas and Steve Kramer

1,037 miles separate Albuquerque from St. Louis County, but that isn't stopping Steve Kramer. He says he's primarily impelled by a desire to demonstrate reciprocity, solidarity. "We've had people come here to join us in our struggle. It was important to us, it meant a lot. Likewise, we will go there.

"As organizers ourselves, we're sensitive to the fact that they don't want troublemakers who can hurt their cause. We understand about outside agitators. But we reached out to organizers there on the ground, and got positive feedback as to our coming. We bring that sensitivity being involved in our own community."

Within hours three vast coolers were filled with supplies for the people on the ground contributed by people in the Albuquerque Police Violence movement. Medical supplies too.

Among the truckload of contributed goods, Nora Anaya, one of the Burque 13, made sure there were healing roots and herbs used by the Curanderas healers of New Mexico. Nora explained to me:

"The healing herbs I sent were what was used in times of old, when there were no doctors for thousands of miles--roots and herbs from the cabinet. For instance clove that you might use to spice a ham could take the pain from a toothache until they could find a way to pull the tooth. Or eucalyptus oil for asthma, a few drops under the nose helps clear the passageways.

"I sent contra yerva, one of the most powerful herbs that I've encountered. When you pull it out of the earth and it dries, it becomes almost rock like. It's grated and used in powder form and would be very helpful in healing wounds from rubber bullets, for instance. I sent two bags of contra yerva, and a parmesan cheese grater.

"And I meant to give them a quick lesson on healing facial wounds before they left. The best band-aid on the face is the skin of the shell of an egg. It has proteins and you can use a little of the egg white for adhesive. Hold it down with a little bit of pressure and it becomes like a second skin."

At the Enterprise Car Rental where we went to rent the truck--rows of vehicles from various law enforcement agencies.

"We're fighting a system of unlimited resources," says Steve Kramer.

"We'll have a different presence, being from Albuquerque," Dinah explained. "We're coming as citizen journalists, community people who have been through it. When the tear gas clears, the rubber bullets have been picked up off the street, and the press goes away, it doesn't mean that the problems go away. They remain."

Joining the entourage, Ledford Thomas who will be radio blogging on Burque Media. Thomas hopes to meet the Brown family while in Ferguson.

Thomas, a retired Account Manager for Sprint, sees this moment as a "defining moment." He sees "a Nation of People coming together around this." He hopes to document "the historical moment when change DID happen. I want to be able to tell my grandson that I was there."

Our friend Isaac Mitchell, who thanks to the APD will have no grandsons from Jonathan. (Dinah's image, I think)

After hours of preparation (including picking up gas masks, just in case), it soon came time to pack up the truck. Vi from Burque Media came with her young son to give her friends a sendoff of hugs, smiles and fine words. "These are my brothers and sisters in the fight," she told me brimming with a current of high emotion. "I want to be here with them before they go. The National Guard is in Ferguson, and that's bad."

"The police are shooting people," Vi continued. "Because they feel threatened by the color of their skin, or their clothes, all these superficial reasons. This is a Class War we've been engaged in for many years now, and it's all over the country. At Burque Media we're just trying to wake people up, and bring visibility to experience and knowledge from other places."

In addition to the many visitors who had come by to drop off supplies, many emails and other messages of support were conveyed. "This is a peoples' effort," Dinah explained. "We wouldn't be on our way if it weren't for the many contributions of cash and Western Union wires we received from about fifteen contributors so far. Every time someone said I wish I could give even more, I said What you gave is exactly what we needed. And it's true.

"We're going out there, and we might not see any action," Dinah said. "But we're going to get that second story, the one from the people, the story of the community. We live the struggle every day. City Councilman Dan Harris whined that he was tired of the public comments. He doesn't know what tired is. It isn't ever over for us, it doesn't ever end for us. And I don't think it can."

To help bring our friends home from Ferguson on Monday and to support the continued work of Burque Media, won't you please consider making a generous contribution. A Go Fund Me campaign has been established HERE.

Update: Watching the raw footage Burque Media has been sharing via Ustream is everything I personally hoped for. Dinah and Steve are bringing love, soothing people with their voices, words, handshakes, embraces. I can only imagine the richness of experience they will be bringing home to New Mexico, and am so deeply and hugely proud that they are our ambassadors to Missouri.