Anson Stevens-Bollen
The City of Santa Fe broke New Mexico's public records law by denying SFR access to apparent disciplinary records for two police officers, a state District Court judge has ruled.
In an order dated May 29, Judge Bryan Biedscheid wrote that city officials withheld documents associated with officer Jacquaan Matherson and Detective Ladislas Szabo in violation of the New Mexico Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA). Both are no longer employed by the city.
The decision marks a potentially significant victory in SFR's long push to bring Santa Fe in line with some other law enforcement agencies around the state by telling the public when it's officers violate policies and how they were punished for doing it. SFR had asked for records of discipline for officers whose conduct was the subject of settlement payouts.
"On its face, this order means we may have taken a step forward toward some transparency for law enforcement," says attorney Daniel Yohalem who, along with Katherine Murray, is representing SFR in a lawsuit the newspaper filed against the city last year. "The problem is, at this point, we don't yet know what those documents are that the judge ordered produced, because only he and the city have seen them."
SFR's original request was for records that would show the fact that an officer had been disciplined, meaning the judge's order should, in theory, give the newspaper a look at some documents spelling out punishment.
Biedscheid's order comes as protesters in New Mexico and around the nation demand deep changes to policing after several instances of police misconduct—particularly violence by officers against black and brown people—have spilled into public view in recent weeks.
Of note, residents only learned about more than a dozen complaints lodged against now-fired Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin—and the times the white officer was punished for misconduct—after Chauvin drove the neck of George Floyd, a black man, into the Minnesota cement with his knee last month.
The incident was captured on a harrowing, nearly 9-minute bystander video. Floyd later died, and marchers from Santa Fe to Los Angeles to Washington, DC, have taken to the streets nearly every day and night since.
Other cities and states, notably New York, have come in for intense criticism over their laws and policies that shield officer discipline from the public.
Although reform advocates have not included discipline transparency in the now-trending "8 Can't Wait" list of demands making their way around the nation, many who want fundamental changes to the way Americans, especially nonwhite people, are policed say knowing when and how police higher-ups mete out sanctions for excessive force and other misconduct is vital.
"Public scrutiny is an essential element for ensuring that police carry out their duties in accordance with their own policies and the Constitution," says Peter Simonson, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico. "If officers have racially profiled, used excessive force, or otherwise harmed members of the community, the public has a right to know what actions the department took, if any, to hold them accountable. In this moment, with the state of policing as it is, we simply cannot have too much transparency around police conduct and officer discipline."
Despite Judge Biedscheid's order, the national call for sunlight and his own acknowledgments for the need to overhaul some aspects of policing, Mayor Alan Webber appears to be committed to secrecy for cops.
During a news conference Monday, the mayor pledged to review the city's use of force policies according to the "8 Can't Wait" initiative from Julian Castro and Barack Obama.
Webber also used the meeting to release some details of a police shooting in the city on Sunday. He said officers fired multiple shots at a suspected shoplifter who had hurt two store employees with a machete, leaving the white man hospitalized in intensive care.
"Any time there is an officer-involved shooting, it's assumed to be significant in our community and requires significant oversight," he says.
Yet, Webber's administration continues to argue in court that the outcome of that oversight isn't any of the public's business.
On Monday, the mayor inaccurately characterized his policy of refusing to disclose police discipline records as a state policy.
"As I understand it, it's not just the city that has the policy," Webber said. "It's a state exception to IPRA that says all public employees have a right to have their records not disclosed. I know there is a lawsuit that the city and the Reporter are involved in right now that will attempt to resolve that issue in court, and we'll abide by whatever the court suggests as what the law stipulates."
Other cities, including Albuquerque, however, have enacted policies directing police officials to release those kinds of records.
Beyond the incremental victory for SFR, Biedscheid's order left some questions in the air—and some concerns for Yohalem, one of the newspaper's lawyers.
According to Biedscheid, the city properly denied SFR's request for then-Sgt. Benjamin Valdez's disciplinary records. Valdez is now the deputy chief.
"Things are pretty cloudy at the moment," Yohalem says. "Obviously, any document that says, 'You're suspended for six months' or whatever is a fact, not someone's opinion, and needs to be disclosed under IPRA. We don't know what those Valdez records are, so we need a review process that would allow us to know how to take that issue up on appeal."
And the last part of SFR's request, for documents showing whether Sgt. Nick Wood has faced consequences for on-the-job misconduct, remains uncertain after the city did not turn any records over to the judge so he could determine whether they should be public.
The city appears to have said in one of its court filings that no disciplinary records exist for Wood.
Yohalem says the stakes for the case have been raised since SFR filed the lawsuit, as police reform movements can be hamstrung without transparency about discipline.
"This is absolutely a bigger deal now, and it was already a big deal before what happened in Minnesota—that's why we've been litigating this issue," he says. "If the public can't monitor police conduct and police misconduct and, every bit as importantly, how supervisors respond to that misconduct, then the police are running their own show with no satisfactory oversight from the people who employ and pay them: the citizens."
