{"id":107065,"date":"2015-12-09T12:00:48","date_gmt":"2015-12-09T19:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=107065"},"modified":"2015-12-10T08:53:53","modified_gmt":"2015-12-10T15:53:53","slug":"this-isnt-the-way-to-handle-a-high-profile-public-corruption-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2015\/12\/this-isnt-the-way-to-handle-a-high-profile-public-corruption-case\/","title":{"rendered":"This isn’t the way to handle a high-profile public corruption case"},"content":{"rendered":"

COMMENTARY:<\/strong> When Susana Martinez\u00a0was district attorney, the state auditor asked her to review\u00a0a special audit of Do\u00f1a Ana County government for possible prosecution.<\/p>\n

\"Heath<\/a>

Heath Haussamen<\/p><\/div>\n

The county provides office space for the district attorney. At the time, a county-hired architect was designing new offices for county government and the DA.\u00a0The hiring of that architect was one of the issues\u00a0identified in the audit.<\/p>\n

Seeking to\u00a0avoid a potential conflict of interest<\/a> — or at least the perception of one — Martinez asked state police and the district attorney in Santa Fe to handle the case instead.<\/p>\n

A decade later, contrast that cautious — and correct — decision with the circus that played out on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

At a morning news conference,\u00a0Sheriff Enrique “Kiki” Vigil and current District Attorney Mark D’Antonio — whose agencies are both housed by county government — announced that they’d arrested the administrator of the county jail<\/a> on embezzlement and other charges. Vigil took control of the jail. During two news conferences, he took\u00a0potshots at county officials who’s jail he’d just seized.<\/p>\n

County Manager Julia Brown, with a confident\u00a0look on her face, interrupted the second news conference to hand\u00a0a visibly flustered Vigil<\/a> a restraining order requiring that he\u00a0pull his agents out of the jail and give control back to Brown.<\/p>\n

Vigil replied with another potshot. Then he\u00a0complied with the judge’s order.<\/p>\n

Vigil has repeatedly picked fights with county commissioners and administrators since taking office, starting with\u00a0a battle about revenue from a tax increase<\/a>. He’s accused\u00a0commissioners of violating<\/a> the state Open Meetings Act, blamed commissioners and administration<\/a> for service cuts he implemented<\/a>,\u00a0and\u00a0sued two commissioners\u00a0in federal court<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Following the\u00a0first arrest in his\u00a0ongoing\u00a0investigation of county government, Vigil continues to complain<\/a>\u00a0about how the county’s administration is treating\u00a0him.<\/p>\n

It wouldn’t be unreasonable for some to perceive that Vigil is attempting extortion, or a coup,\u00a0and that D’Antonio, who’s up for re-election next year, is along for the ride to boost his anti-corruption credentials.<\/p>\n

D’Antonio tried\u00a0to reassure everyone at a news conference that the arrest of\u00a0Chris Barela and the ongoing investigation “is not a witch hunt.” He asked the sheriff and county commissioners to work together.<\/p>\n

Here’s a tip for the\u00a0top two law-enforcement officers in Do\u00f1a Ana County: The animosity Vigil helped create led to the perception among some that this is a witch hunt. Vigil is continuing to\u00a0fan those flames.<\/p>\n

Couple that with the fact that the county provides office space for D’Antonio and Vigil — and\u00a0also\u00a0controls salaries for the sheriff’s employees and provides other support\u00a0— and the correct path forward should be\u00a0obvious. It’s the one Martinez modeled a decade ago.<\/p>\n

Vigil and D’Antonio need to\u00a0ask someone else take over this\u00a0investigation\u00a0and prosecution.\u00a0The Las Cruces Police Department. The attorney general. State police. Anyone else.<\/p>\n

I’m making no judgement about the charges against Barela, which may have merit. And I’m not criticizing the investigators and other employees who work for Vigil and D’Antonio. I’ve been a crime reporter in this community. Most of its law-enforcement\u00a0officers are hard-working men and women with integrity.<\/p>\n

It’s the elected\u00a0officials at the top who need to have the political sense\u00a0and ethical grounding to spot a potential conflict and avoid it.<\/p>\n

That’s especially important when taking on public corruption. Law enforcement officials\u00a0must seek\u00a0to\u00a0leave no doubt in people’s minds that they\u00a0acted with integrity. Otherwise they’ve\u00a0corrupted their\u00a0attempt to root out corruption.<\/p>\n

Barela deserves a trial not tainted by politics. The investigators deserve to know they’re doing work for the good of the people they’ve sworn to protect, not the political ambitions of their bosses. The men, women and children housed in the county jail deserve to know this case is about the alleged theft of food, toiletries and other items that were supposed to be theirs. The citizens of this county deserve\u00a0the same.<\/p>\n

That’s not an assurance Vigil and D’Antonio can provide. It’s time to hand this case off to someone else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To avoid a real or perceived conflict, the Do\u00f1a Ana County sheriff and district attorney need to ask someone else to take over their high-profile investigation of county government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":55852,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,16],"tags":[115,114],"class_list":["post-107065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-guest-columns","tag-dona-ana-county","tag-public-corruption"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}