Mhm.
Well, good afternoon. Welcome to the
work session. Today is Monday, July 27,
2026. It's approximately 1:00 p.m. I'm
Mayor Eric R. We will start with a
moment of silence for the brave men and
women of the United States Armed Forces.
And also for the Las Cruces Police
Department, Las Cruces Fire Department
as they keep our city safe 24/7 365.
Join me in the pledge.
I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America.
And to the republic for which it stands,
one nation
Interesting.
We're good?
Okay.
Okay, we'll start out with our agenda.
We only have one item on the agenda
today. It's 1.1, the 10th semi-annual
police audit summary evaluation
uh
presented by the OIR Group.
Uh Viola.
Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, City Council.
I'm Viola Perea, City Auditor. Today, we
have the OIR Group with us to present
their 10th semi-annual police audit
report for Council. I'd like to
introduce our two presenters today. We
have Teresa Magoola and Steve Connolly.
Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, council
members. Thank you so much for having us
back to your beautiful city. Um I am
Teresa Magoola and I have my colleague
Steve Connolly here with me. Uh we are
here to present uh as we do twice a year
um our review of the Las Cruces Police
Department administrative
investigations.
And so
we know most of you um and so this
becomes uh a little repetitive, but for
members of the audience who may not be
aware of who we are and what we do. Um
Steve and I are two members of OIR
Group. We are a team of police practice
experts. Uh we have about 20 years of
experience as independent police
auditors uh throughout various
jurisdictions, mainly in California, but
of course also here in Las Cruces and a
variety of other places throughout the
United States.
It is important here to note that our
scope of work uh is to review closed
administrative investigations that were
conducted by the Las Cruces Police
Department.
So, our role is not to investigate those
directly. It is also not to issue any
kind of findings or discipline related
to those. That all lives within the
office of the chief of police and his
command staff.
What we do is we come in after the fact
when an investigation has been closed,
if there's any discipline it has been
issued. And what we're doing is looking
at the systems and the processes that
this department has in place uh to hold
its personnel accountable.
And so, what we're looking for mainly
are administrative investigations that
are complete, objective, thorough, and
fair. So, not only are we looking at the
investigations themselves, but also the
findings, any kind of outcome, whether
that's disciplinary or otherwise, and
determining whether it fits into those
uh review categories.
In order to do that, we have full access
to the department's administrative
investigations. These are things that
might otherwise be confidential, or if
they're available to members of the
public, they may be redacted. And we
have the full file provided to us.
Nothing is redacted. We have body-worn
camera footage. We look at police
reports. Sometimes there's radio
communications. The whole scope of that
particular administrative file is made
available to us.
So, in the past, in the past 5 years or
so, we have presented to you on a
twice-annual basis, and we have provided
a review of the cases that were closed
within the first half or the second half
of the calendar year.
And as of March of this year, uh we were
uh we worked collaboratively both with
city leadership as well as with
department leadership um in crafting a
new contract and a relatively similar
but expanded scope of work. So, this
report here is a bit of a hybrid. And
so, we apologize for the any confusion
that that might cause because we have
the first half, January to March, in
which we were using our previous model.
That was looking at internal and
external investigations that led to a
formal investigation. We were providing
full memos with respect to each of those
cases. So, you'll see at the back of the
agenda packet, there's four cases that
we reviewed in that way.
After March, our scope of work expanded.
And so, we were able to start receiving
cases that were submitted by members of
the public, external complaints,
uh that were classified in two different
categories, category two and category
three. Okay, so these are complaints
that when they came into the department,
they were classified as matters that
likely would not rise to the level of a
formal investigation.
What does that look like?
It means, for example, someone might be
contacting the department with what
appears to be a complaint, but upon some
form of investigation, it's determined
that it's really just a question.
Uh we had one of these cases where a
member of the public was looking for
information about a protest event in the
city, and what was the sort of right
method for LCPD to respond, and so on.
That question was answered, uh and that
was determined to be a category two
external complaint.
Category three, we get a little more
nuanced and weedsy. I'm going to leave
the discussion of that to Steve a little
later in the presentation, but suffice
to say that it is complaints from
members of the Las Cruces community that
the department has classified as
something that, upon face value,
does not have any overt misconduct
within the narrative of that complaint.
So, why a change in the scope of work?
Well, this came from a variety of
different places. One was from this
council who was um asking, you know, are
we actually seeing everything that
members of the public are complaining
about?
Two was from community who was concerned
that there was some kind of screening
process that was happening that was
preventing us as auditors from reviewing
everything coming in.
And three was from the chief himself who
determined that he would like us to see
everything to prevent any concerns that
there might be bias or a shielding or
screening process of any kind. So, we're
now receiving all of those.
So, in this reporting period, we have 21
cases that we reviewed. And just to give
some context about where the scope
changed a little bit of the of and
expanded the scope. In previous cycles,
we may have been reviewing anywhere
between 10 to 16 cases. And with the
inclusion of the new complaint
categories that we're now receiving,
we're up to 21. As you see, there's a
slight difference there. Um and we are
receiving and reviewing more things.
Again, I'll
remind everyone that these are cases
that were closed in the first and second
quarters of 2026. So, our closing period
was June 30th of '26, and we're
reporting here to you
um in late July with that report.
These complaints covered about 30
employees of the police department. Um
and some of those were officers. The
majority of them were officers, but also
in this period, we saw some complaints
against some non-sworn personnel. Uh
those were, for example, animal control
or codes officers. Uh there may have
been some administrative personnel
within the department as well. Uh so,
we're looking at about 30 officers that
were named in these complaints.
So, this first piece of our audit is the
internal investigations. This has not
changed. This has always been the same.
These are cases that are initiated
within the department. So, a supervisor
or command uh staff member identifies
what is likely or possibly misconduct
and opens a formal administrative
investigation through internal affairs.
We had 12 of those cases in this period,
and that aligns with our past reporting
periods.
These generated about 42 unique
allegations against a handful of
predominantly officers.
And the large number of those were
related to vehicle pursuits and uses of
force.
Um a couple cases that generated a large
amount of allegations. So, we're not
talking like 40 different allegations,
it's all within one case, various policy
implications within each case that might
lend a case to have, you know, 5, 10, 15
allegations within there.
The remaining were around kind of
procedural reporting issues, evidence
handling, and so on.
These internal cases
really indicate to us that LCPD is doing
a commendable job identifying and
addressing those issues for their own
employees. They're not waiting to hear
about it from an external source, they
themselves are identifying them,
managing them, and correcting that
behavior.
Now, here's where our scope has
expanded, and that's the external
investigations. Okay, so in previous
iterations of our reports, we may have
seen anywhere between three and five
cases of externals. Now, we're up to
nine, and the majority of those were in
that category three, which Steve will
elaborate more on. But that has
increased that scope of work and allowed
us to have a broader lens into the types
of things that are concerning for
members of community.
The majority of these are related to
customer service and reporting issues.
That's not surprising. These are mostly
things that have to do with how an
individual perceives the interaction
that he or she had with a member of the
Las Cruces Police Department.
And so some of these hinge largely on
perception.
It hinges on communication and the
effectiveness of that communication and
on perceived delivery.
Some of these have to do with officer
discretion, right? So, sometimes when an
officer responds to the field, he or she
has sort of a a
breath of ways that they might respond
to something, and a member of the public
might feel it should be A and the
officer chooses B, C, or D, right? And
that leads to a dissatisfaction. When
really it's within policy, procedure,
practice for the officer to have
responded in that way.
Outcomes.
This is really where we get
most of our findings um with respect to
the cases that we review.
And these, for the most part, the
internal investigations were sustained.
This, again, not surprising. If this is
something that a member of the Las
Cruces Police Department has already
raised as a challenge or a concern, it
is likely that that's going to be true
and result in some form of uh corrective
action on the back end.
The external investigations,
we saw two sustained allegations and the
remaining were not sustained. And again,
in large part because it has to do with
that perception issue, with
communication, where something might not
be objectively misconduct, but it has
some room for perhaps some corrective
action or improvement in the way that
customer service delivery is happening.
Or in some cases, the officer acted
precisely as he or she should have um
and it's that dissatisfaction by the end
user of the system.
These external complaints, despite
having a low sustained rate, are still
an important piece of the puzzle, right?
Because they're illuminating both to us
as auditors, to the department, to you
as council members,
those expectations and potential trust
issues that community may have with its
police department. So, we see them as a
valuable and critical component of this
work.
Part of our scope of work is related to
the complaint demographics and we've um
provided some information about this
since the start of our engagement.
We now have about 73 complainants for
which we can identify a race or
ethnicity and we continue to find that
in our very limited statistical sample
here, there is no evidence that race or
ethnicity was a factor in the
complaints, the outcomes, or the status
of the employee relative to the
complainant. In other words, are
Hispanic members of the community
receiving a disproportionate number of
uh service complaints? We're not seeing
that.
We started to break down the location
data. So, we take a look at the zip
codes in which these complaints are
being originated. And in previous
sessions, we reported to you that the
majority of those, because they're
internal complaints, happen with the
department's zip code and that doesn't
really give us any meaningful data. So,
we took a look at the complaints uh
made by members of the public in
isolation.
And what we saw here is that they were
fairly evenly distributed among the
three more populated zip codes um in
your community. And so, we have 88001,
012, and 005 and those have a very equal
amount of complaints generated from
them.
So, again, it's matching sort of the the
demographics of the city. The more
populous areas may have more calls for
service, may generate more complaints,
but I'm not seeing anything, again, very
rudimentary statistical analysis, not
seeing anything that might suggest that
there's a pattern of over policing or
particularly hostile or dissatisfying
policing in a particular area of your
city.
And then finally we get to discipline.
And we have the sustained allegations
that are resulting in some form of
formal discipline.
That can be a verbal reprimand. It can
be suspension, so days off
for that particular misconduct. And then
in one case in this particular sample,
we had a trainee who was released from
the agency.
Irrespective of the finding, whether
it's sustained or not, LCPD is providing
some form of debrief or counseling or
conversation or even retraining with
those involved officers. And we see that
really as the hallmark of an agency
that's looking toward how do we make
things better? Even if we haven't done a
formal policy violation, how do we make
this engagement with our community
better? How do we tactically perform
better? And certainly that's something
that LCPD is committed to and it's
looking future forward. Right.
Turn it over to Steve now. He's going to
talk about some of our key findings
that we've seen in this particular
period.
Thank you Teresa and good afternoon Mr.
Mayor and and counselors.
Uh very happy to be back with you again
um
in terms of the the
reporting process that that some of you
are already very familiar with by now.
Obviously the individual case studies
are the meat and potatoes of our work
during the year, but then twice a year
this is an opportunity for us to kind of
take a step back and look more broadly
at at trends and any patterns and and
have the opportunity to kind of dialogue
with the department in a in a different
way as opposed to our engagement on
individual case outcomes and just the
questions that we have as we're working
through
the evidence that Teresa was talking
about. So,
in terms of some of the findings and
recommendations that emerged from from
this report, the this first slide talks
about our review of critical incidents.
There were two critical incidents,
officer-involved shooting cases, that
went had gone through the entirety of
their process during this cycle. So, we
had the opportunity to review both of
those and we as the report talks about,
we have worked with the department and
focused on this issue a great deal. We
are impressed with the review mechanisms
that the department has in place.
Obviously, there are a lot of formal
investigative processes here. There's a
full-fledged criminal investigation into
the legality of the officer's actions,
but the department's administrative
assessment of it is is also going to be
a very very important in terms of not
only making sure that people are
adhering to policy, which is sort of the
bottom line question, but more broadly,
are the officers following training? Are
there lessons to be learned from these
these very significant events, these
impactful events on the community, and
adjustments that the department can or
should be making across a variety of
different categories? And as I say, we
have found that the department has has
ramped up that process in the last few
years, particularly under Chief Story. I
know that it is a point of emphasis for
him. One of the things that we talk
about here and we see their work
periodically, if there's a use of force
case that not, you know, isn't
necessarily an officer-involved shooting
case,
but it's a use of force that there is
some concern about whether that force
was in policy or not,
the department has a cadre of subject
matter experts who are going to review
that very, very carefully and
comprehensively to see if the if the use
of force was was consistent with the
law, consistent with department policy,
consistent with department expectations,
and if necessary, it's going to uh
there'll be some remedial steps taken
with the officers. And again, the the
potential for lesson lessons learned.
One of the areas where we've had some I
guess mild disagreement with the the
department and it's it's kind of a
it's a funny problem to have. We are
very, very complimentary of the work of
the force review cadre. We think they do
an excellent, thoughtful job, and we
would like to see that that glass broken
and that tool used on a greater range of
of uh incidents than than the department
has currently uh allotted.
Most significantly, we we really feel
like every officer-involved shooting
case should just kind of automatically
be brought to that force review cadre so
that they we know that they're going to
give it their full workup. We've talked
to the chief about this extensively, and
again, uh
in some ways it's it's a compliment to
the the
the
um process that he has implemented. He's
he has said a couple things about it,
and I don't want to speak for him, but
what he has basically said to us is um
he will certainly feel free to use that
if if necessary, if the circumstances of
the case uh warrant it, but he also has
resource concerns. I mean, these folks
that are part of this team have they
wear a number of different hats in the
department, and from a resource
perspective, he's concerned about the
the feasibility of it.
And maybe most importantly, from his
perspective, and it's a point that we
respect, uh
any one of these events is automatically
going to get a
rigorous level of scrutiny from within
the department managerial ranks. It's
going to be looked at carefully. They're
going to be looking for for lessons and
adjustments and so forth. And so, that
formal step is not necessarily required
in order to make that happen. And again,
we will keep talking with him about this
from our perspective. Uh
the just the whole idea of the formality
of it and the documentation of it, that
way we know that the some of the things
that we have questions about are are
getting talked about and identified. And
and I think there's there's probably a
happy medium in there somewhere. But,
that is one of the the recommendations
that we have is just to more
comprehensively document some of the
analysis that is taking place in the
aftermath of these events.
Okay, Teresa mentioned the category
three cases, which probably the biggest
change in our
paradigm from past visits that we've had
here. She talked a lot about the the
impetus behind it, which is the idea
that that there were there was a a small
category of complaints from the public
that we were not seeing. And so, the the
department and the city decided that
that we were going to address that by
just having us get everything. And a
little bit about the the category three
cases.
They they could go into category three
in in a couple of different ways. One
being that the complaint on its face,
even if everything were true, would not
constitute a policy violation on the
part of the officers just by the very
nature of of what is being alleged. And
secondly,
they also put into category three cases
in which the initial triage, the initial
review of the evidence, and I think the
body worn camera recordings play a a
huge role in this. The department
recognizes, based on its initial review
of the evidence, that there is no merit
to the allegations and that they are
therefore ready to stop the the process
and and call the case exonerated or
unfounded without sending it along for a
formal investigation that's going to
involve interviewing the officers and
it's probably going to be a lot more
time-consuming and a lot more steps to
it. So,
again, that makes perfect sense to us.
We see it in other jurisdictions where
we work. There are a lot of agencies
that have a similar model for for
addressing and and dispoing cases, but
the potential criticism is, well, okay,
the department has reviewed that body
worn camera and said that we're done,
but if that's the end of the process and
it never makes us, we don't have the
opportunity to do that same review of
the body worn camera evidence and kind
of come to our own conclusions about it.
So, that it has been addressed and it as
Teresa said, we had a number of of
matters that we would not have
previously seen that we did get in in
this
review period.
Others of our findings relate to
communication and and customer service.
That's a big theme for us. A lot of the
obviously the the the significant
events, the critical incidents, the
officer-involved shooting cases very
very understandably get the the lion's
share of public attention and concern
and media attention and concern, but for
a lot of members of the public, their
their perception, their experience of
policing in Las Cruces is is down at a
much lower level of of stress, if you
will. But those are still impactful um
encounters and and the whole idea that
the department is that the officers are
are trying to put their best foot
forward and and working on their
communication skills and trying to
provide as Teresa was saying good
customer service
even under circumstances that are
challenging and even with people that
are difficult. We saw a few instances of
that where again, we we kind of hold the
department to a high standard in this
regard. We see places where the the
communication probably could have been
different or better and and we've
encouraged the department to keep an eye
on that and and to, you know,
make it a point of not only scrutiny in
the review process, but a point of
emphasis in terms of the regular culture
of the department and the standards that
it is it is kind of imparting down to
the officers at the field level.
Other notable
um
events from from this period of time,
uh I'm sure that Chief has informed you
about the department's participation in
the CALEA accreditation process. That is
a national
organization for standards in law
enforcement that we are very familiar
with. A number of our agencies are CALEA
certified agencies and the department
has made a huge commitment over the last
few years to put all of its pieces in
place and meet the very rigorous
standards for CALEA certification. We
actually had the opportunity to be a
part of that. Uh
Oversight is is one of the things that
they are interested in as part of of
again, contemporary policing standards.
And we were happy to meet with the CALEA
team and and talk to them a little bit
about our experiences and we were
pleased to be able to say that we have
found the department to absolutely
meet its obligations in terms of
providing us with everything that we
need, but beyond that, being willing to
engage with us and and we debate about
things and have our recommendations and
sometimes they get accepted and
sometimes they don't, but we we never
feel like we're not being heard or that
the department isn't taking us seriously
or that they're, you know, just trying
to to marginalize us and and and shrink
the impact of our work in whatever ways
they can. So, it we were we again,
pleased to be able to to share that with
the accreditation team. And then we're
also aware of the the department's
efforts. We were just talking about
communication, customer service.
Uh the Chief shared with us that the
department's participation in this
trust-building project which involved
the auditing of of thousands of the
AI-generated auditing of thousands of
hours of body-worn camera. I think the
marks for the department were were
pretty high overall in terms of the
effectiveness of the of the interactions
and the
uh
in terms of of um
resident or or community member
perception as well as as as the officers
um
behavior and experience of it. And
to the extent that there were you know,
a small percentage of cases where for
one reason or another the interaction
didn't go as as effectively as it could
have or ideally would have, the whole
idea is to to say, "Hey, we would like
to get to 100%." We know that that's not
always possible and that we can't always
obviously control
the willingness of members of the public
to engage with us and to be compliant,
cooperative, and to work with attempts
at de-escalation and and kind of um you
know, restructuring situations that are
not going well. But, the goal is for the
department to always be able to be in a
position to put its best foot forward
and I I think it's great that the the
department and the chief have shown a
commitment to that.
Um one last thing, obviously we we hope
that we'll be able to share our
perspective and and maybe more
importantly learn
from the feedback of of community
members who attend tonight's listening
session. It's going to be right here in
the council chambers. And the last thing
I would say, Teresa talked about the
ways that our contract has has evolved
and that our scope of work has changed.
One of the things that's new is we we
got into town last night and had the
opportunity to spend the morning
participating into in some training that
the department put together for us.
That's a new element of our contractual
obligations.
And we went through a discussion of some
of the legal standards that use of force
that the that the
officers are learning and also had the
opportunity to participate into some
scenario training, which I understand
you folks are are directly familiar with
yourselves. So, we appreciated that
opportunity and and as the chief said,
which which he appreciated which we
appreciated. He said, "We know you have
some familiarity with I mean, probably
more than than you folks who have real
jobs and and regular lives. We know this
stuff pretty well from having been doing
it for a really long time." And he said,
"We're not trying to teach you things
that, you know, we recognize you already
know, but the idea is for for us to get
a sense of what the department is
learning
and what points of emphasis the officers
are being given. And I will tell you I
think speaking for Teresa, we we were
both impressed with the the
thoughtfulness uh and the the
um thoroughness and I think the
constructive nature of the the training
that we attended. So, thank you for
listening. Uh and as always, you know,
we're we're here to respond to any
questions that that you folks might have
about particular aspects of the report.
So, thank you.
Well, thank you, Stephen, and thank you,
Teresa, for the presentation. Uh I'll
turn to council to see if there's any
questions. Counselor Grant.
Thank you. Thank you for your
presentation as ever and your report.
And thank you to Chief Story for also
sharing that other report that was
alluded to here and has been very
informative. My two questions are sort
of related to two things that I think
were called out specifically by a couple
of things in the report. One is really
related to something that is
m- many things are not necessarily our
place to to sort of dictate, but one of
them is related to the folks who do the
background check for the initial hiring
of of officers. I did notice that there
was a little
that there was a reference to
perhaps that not being the most robust
background check process that might have
been happening and I just wanted to sort
of
see if there's any additional
conversation I like if that's an issue
of who we are hiring or who we're
contracting with. I would love I would
hope that we can really evaluate that.
Because the
the cost of like things like this
slipping through seems seems pretty high
in terms of training and effort that the
department puts into
um folks and I think we should do that
for people who are
well well background checked. Um
so I I'm wondering if Chief or you all
can sort of speak more to that.
And then the other question I have is
related to a specific policy.
Good afternoon Mayor. Counselor Karan,
Jeremy Stover, Police Chief for the
record.
So it's a good question. It's a fair
question. I'll give you a little bit
just a quick history on kind of what
we've done in the past. So when I
started in for probably 15 years plus
after that we did all of our background
investigations in-house. Officers would
go through specialized training for
conducting pre-employment black
backgrounds.
And then they would do them. There's
pros and cons to that. Um
when I was at the academy we started
contracting partially just because of
capacity. We had to get through this
process
a little bit more efficiently with the
company that um
has done back had already done
backgrounds for other agencies within
the state including the New Mexico State
Police. So that's the company we have
used since. Now in this specific case we
all agreed that there were some things
done by that particular investigator
that weren't optimal. It wasn't that it
wasn't necessarily a thorough background
but it wasn't thorough enough because
there were some things that probably
should have been caught.
Um and not not as egregious as it might
sound on the surface but definitely not
to our satisfaction.
So conversations have been had with that
company with the ownership of that
company.
It overall they do really good
background investigations. They've
expanded, like I said, they do them for
New York State Police and other agencies
and part of that expansion I think was
letting some of the internal controls
slip a little bit.
They have high standards, there's a
review process.
And so where we're at I say all that
where we're at right now is I still feel
comfortable using this company,
especially after the meeting we had.
That being said, there's going to be
extra checks on our end to make sure
that
there's redundancy in place and if we
have any future issues I'm absolutely
open to looking at other
uh vendors that can do a better job, but
when you zoom out, by and large most of
those investigations are very thorough
and they do a good job.
No, thank you. That is extremely helpful
actually to understand that context and
I think the thing that happened also
seems like it may have been a
combination of perhaps information and
systems data, which I know that you all
are always navigating and they're always
navigating too, so I suspect it's
in addition to the interview process,
but I really appreciate the context and
sharing of that because I wouldn't want
us to be
doing something that is maybe not up to
what you would expect or what you would
hope for to to screen folks. So, um
and then my second question was related
to something that
I didn't know was part of our our sort
of I know that um
chase and pursuit policies are very
hotly debated topic and I think this was
one of the really interesting
ones in your
um
sort of portfolio that you all looked at
this time and there the technology
that's used to in lieu of a chase um
that I I didn't really know anything
about. I I I was really interested to
know
um if maybe you all could share an
update or best practices or if this is a
new thing. I just I
I thought that our policy toward pursuit
is aimed at protecting the public and
this technology really seems like it's
enabling additional protection of the
public when when it's deployed um on
behalf of
the the chase. So, I'm wondering if you
all could talk a little bit more about
that because this seems like evolving
rapidly evolving technological
situation. Um and if there are any
policy or training-related things that
if you wanted to share, um I would love
to hear them.
Thank you for that question,
Councilmember Curran. Um certainly, as
you're mentioning, this is all
developing sort of in real time. It's
one of these like building the plane
mid-flight situations, and we're seeing
this in every uh jurisdiction where
we're working where this new technology
is just coming at departments. It's
coming at all of us.
Um one of the things that uh we're
gratified to see with this department in
particular is in the development of
their real-time um crime center, uh
which we were uh able to visit in our
last visit. Um they've really put a lot
of thought into how to best deploy the
technology so that it is effective uh
for members of the public and for public
safety, but also has sufficient
guardrails on some of the things that
we're concerned about related to privacy
or over-surveillance or the concerns
that are coming out around, you know,
data sharing or retention. Um with
particular emphasis on StarChase, uh
that's the technology that you're
alluding to in the vehicle pursuit, uh
that's relatively new. I know this
department is using it, and there are
two uh that we work with uh in
California that are using it. It's
deployed infrequently at the moment, I
think because it has some uh challenges
in terms of the deployment capacity and
and have the distance for it and so on.
And so, it's just now starting to be
used. So, I think as we see more cases,
we'll be able to develop um sort of more
uh controls or guardrails or policies
related to that. Um but really,
ultimately, when when these real-time
crime centers are being constructed and
they're being deployed, we're looking
for the consideration of both is the
technology something we want to adopt?
Is it effective? Is it useful? Like
really not just because the vendor came
and told you it was.
Um, and I think this department has done
a good job of vetting that. As well as
what are we putting in place in advance
of any challenges or concerns coming
across
uh that can help to mitigate and put
those guardrails up. So, it's all kind
of developing in real time and we're
very mindful of of how that's happening,
you know, across the nation, for sure.
And Mayor and Council, I'll just add to
that. StarChase, we've actually had
StarChase for quite a while. I was a
sergeant in the gang unit when we got it
and we were the first unit to have it.
So, my guess is 2016 or 2017, maybe,
um, is when we got StarChase. We've used
it effectively a number of times.
However, we don't have a ton of the
systems, so they're not
they're not probably used more than a
handful of times a year, but they do
help prevent pursuits when we use them.
And New Mexico has a very restrictive uh
pursuit policy, I I guess you could say,
through statute of the New Mexico Safe
Pursuit Act. So, the departments have to
reflect that, whether you want to or
not. So, we have to be creative in the
sense that we still want to try to get
people's vehicles back when they're
stolen, but we can't necessarily chase
them. So, we have to use these different
technologies and leverage them.
And I think having a bunch of different
options is good because it allows us to
adapt to whatever that particular
situation is. We don't, obviously, catch
them all, but it it helps.
Thank you. Those were the two things
that I I I really appreciate the
background and sort of the context for
all of that. And that
you know, this is an ever on the
technology front. It I understand the
balance that y'all are trying to strike
and I really appreciate you talking
through that. Thanks.
Councilor Benton Cole.
Thank you. Thank you both so much. It's
really great to see you again. Thank you
for being here. Um, I'm really glad that
you've been able to see the real-time
crime center and that you've been able
to engage in some of the other training
opportunities that department has
provided.
You know, I'll start with these
questions. I had similar questions
Today, I don't have any questions about
any of the specific cases that you
presented on in your thorough report.
For me, it was mostly about what I
appreciate having you all with us. One
of the many things is that you were able
to provide knowledge about national
trends, things that are happening, you
know, all all departments may be facing
with. Like we previously discussed the
use of AI in reports, right? And you've
provided some recommendations for that.
And I hope to that you continue to
provide those recommendations wherever
needed. And of course, the use, you
know, the growing concern around
surveillance technology, things like the
real-time crime center and the use of
Flock cameras, I think can have very,
very big pros and also very, very big
cons. And I think that's sort of where
the tension is that we're hearing from
community members on, right? The folks
who feel a little bit safer because the
real-time crime center has been able to
catch folks involved in pedestrian
deaths or whatever the case, right? And
on the other end, the very real growing
concerns of over surveillance,
particularly of certain communities. And
so, I
is there Have you seen any sort of model
policy across the country in any
municipalities that have been using
Um you know, I think there's like a
growing push to get Flock cameras out of
municipalities. You know, I don't trust
Flock, but I also don't trust trust Axio
or whatever the other options are. And
so, have you seen
any sort of model policies that have
been able to build guardrails that you
would be able to share with us? And is
that within the scope of what you can do
for us?
Thank you, Council Member Bencomo. And
funny you should ask. This is a very hot
topic um in California. Um certainly,
there is a lot of um sort of legal
guardrails in place as to when data
sharing can or should occur, in
particular with respect to federal
agents, right? And so, we're seeing, you
know, how does that data sharing happen?
Where is it the responsibility of the
vendor, which clearly has abdicated
responsibility in some cases, um and
where is it the responsibility of the
agency using it? Um we uh have taken the
stance that it is ultimately um a best
practice for that agency to take
ownership. Um and so we're seeing a lot
of shifts um in California. One of the
ways that agencies are managing this is
to actually go in line by line with
their Flock contract and determine where
the data should live. Is the data the
responsibility of the department itself
or it does it live with Flock? How does
that affect that interagency operability
with those systems? Is it even useful at
that point if it only lives in unique
agencies?
So that's one place that we've been
seeing some trends in that direction.
The second is with boards of supervisors
or with councils such as yourself
creating and um monitoring surveillance
use policies. So whether that is a
surveillance use policy that is uh
covering all of the various types of
surveillance cases that are within the
city, um or whether it's specific to
unique technologies. Those can be
drafted up. We've certainly worked with
municipalities in California to help
draft those. And really what we're
looking at are balancing the use cases
very explicitly and the protections that
need to be in place. So retention
policy, data sharing, what are MOUs that
are happening with data sharing? Who
gets to to have access? Is it everybody?
Is it certain users? Are there
supervisor guardrails that need to be in
place? And then our work, of course, is
to come in on the back end with audits
of that. So if you do have those
policies in place, how frequently are
you auditing?
Are you auditing only your use and
searches, or are you auditing the
searches that are happening of your data
by other jurisdictions? What does that
look like? And so we're really starting
to build that model policy um definitely
with all of our agencies in California
and very happy to share out with you
all.
That would be excellent. Uh New Mexico
is also really taking this on very
seriously and and we have as well even
in our welcoming city resolution, we
have a piece about auditing and um even
though I think it folks felt like it was
a lot of layers of work, it also feels
very important in the oversight and
accountability and ownership of us
saying we're going to use this data,
then let's take ownership about what it
means to be responsible stewards.
Absolutely.
So I would appreciate anything you can
share. Thank you.
We absolutely will, yes.
And then the really the last thing I
wanted to cover was the recommendation
that you have around the cadre. And you
said um the recommendation you've
provided is to have all officer-involved
shootings be covered by the cadre.
And then um yes, I also wanted to thank
Chief for sharing the National Policing
Institute's
assessment. Um and they also provided
some great recommendations on there. So
I don't know if you've seen those and I
all of them are very good, but two of
them particularly stood out to me as
important. So I would love to hear from
you and Chief on those recommendations.
Chief, the cadre
uh they suggested and then the other two
on here are the monthly body cam reviews
with the supervisor and then the call um
preparation protocol for like the more
challenging interactions, which was
where the report showed somewhere of
that like erosion of trust. Even though
I think the report did provide a really
really honestly a lot of great insights
on things that we should just keep doing
that the department is doing well and
then the places where
growth can happen. Anyway, so I'll start
there the the on the recommendations.
Mayor Councilmember Como, uh I'll start
with that first one on the
recommendation for the cadre. We had a
lengthy discussion the other day
about this. I In a perfect world, I
absolutely agree with them. I don't
think it's an unreasonable
recommendation.
Um and I wish that it was as easy as me
just saying yes.
The reality is those incidents are
reviewed more than any other incident is
already. They go through multiple levels
of review that are thorough.
And the cadre is not a full-time staff.
They're not They have That's an
ancillary duty. They have another job.
And then they probably have five or six
other jobs on top of that that are that
are ancillary duties.
So, I have to be very thoughtful on what
cases get reviewed and to make sure that
there's a purpose that's
that is not being accomplished already
by some other mechanism. And in this
case, I think it is already uh being
accomplished and it becomes a check the
box to me.
The compromise that we came up with,
which I I think is a good compromise, is
to do a training and equipment debrief
for every officer-involved shooting,
even if it does it doesn't appear to be
anything on its face. And that happens a
lot earlier. So, then we we're looking
for major things, whether they're
training implications or equipment
failures,
that we can address right away as these
review processes are carried out, the
criminal and the administrative that are
already going to occur.
So, hopefully that answers it. It's not
that I don't agree with it. It's just
logistically, it's very difficult to do
that for every critical incident. I'd
rather focus on those lower-level uses
of force that have questions and let
them spend their time reviewing those so
we can address those.
On the recommendations from the MPI
report, well, a couple of things. One,
there's some good recommendations that
we can use to tailor communication
training or de-escalation training,
whatever you want to call it, so that
we're actually
working on the things that appear to be
the things that need to be addressed.
Um the monthly body cam reviews are
already happening. Now, they don't have
that information cuz that's not part of
their assessment. Through Axon, there's
um Axon Performance, which randomly
assigns
uh
two body camera videos that are
non-use-of-force related to each
supervisor for their squad, every member
of their squad, to review.
And then it tracks whether or not
they've done it. There's pros and cons
to that. Those are random reviews. So,
your chances of finding one that's
problematic
because it's a very small percentage of
all interactions as was just
demonstrated by that report
are very low.
The system they're using for that MPI
report is a system that essentially
would do the work of finding the ones
that interactions that are potentially
problematic or they do a great job on
both sides of that spectrum.
So, it's something I would like to
explore in the future actually
purchasing that system because in the
supervisor goes into their person, they
look at their videos. This one's flagged
red that it didn't go so well. They can
go to the video, they can go right to
the point where it starts to go
downhill. They can see what led to that.
Maybe the officer did nothing wrong. Or
maybe they could have done better on how
they communicated. And so, that allows
them to actually address potentially
concerning things, especially from a
training standpoint. And then on the
flip side, they can also go in and see
look at it, they did a phenomenal job.
We would have never known about how they
treated this person if I wouldn't have
gone in and saw that this one was
flagged as exceptional and then
potentially put them in for
accommodation or an award.
I think that would be a better system
and that's kind of what they're
recommending.
But what we're doing already kind of
fits that. And then what was the second
I'm sorry, what was the second
recommendation that you mentioned from
the report?
The other one that stood out to me was
um
a call preparation protocol for the most
challenging calls. Let me look for it
and I'll read to you what it says.
In case you don't remember, there's big
report. Um but now I have to find it.
generally what it was, Counselor,
Okay.
the wording might I
So, it's like a checklist um and I'm not
against checklists, although checklists,
you know, pilots use checklists from the
time they're a brand new pilot till 40,
50 years being a pilot. Planes are a lot
more predictable than people.
So, using a checklist for policing is
not nearly as useful in my opinion as it
is for a pilot or someone who works on
an assembly line or an engineer.
They still have some utility if they're
done correctly.
I think
you know, one of the things they sent me
was a supplement that I did not send to
you all on interacting you know, dealing
with those those calls where the person
is highly intoxicated or under the
influence of something else.
And again, if you look at those
recommendations, some of them fit, some
of them don't depending on the
circumstances. The It depends
unfortunately is how policing is.
I'd rather tailor a training to where it
teaches officers to use critical
thinking skills. It gives them some
tools to help them maybe be more
efficient in how they analyze those
interactions.
But there are no black and white answers
in policing. And so, it's not if this,
then do that. It's getting the officer
to be able to recognize things and make
an appropriate decision based on what
they're taking in. And if you change one
factor on a situation, it could change
everything.
So, that's why I don't like the
checklist. I don't think the
recommendation is wrong. I I just think
it's you have to be careful how you
implement it.
Thanks, Chief. Um I'll spend
a little bit more time on these and send
you some questions. Um that's it for me
though. Thank you very much.
Councilor Harris.
Thanks, Mayor. And and thank you all for
the presentation. Um some of my
questions have have already been
answered. Um so, I think a future
discussion about surveillance and your
input on some policies uh would be
greatly appreciated. Um I was just
talking with Sergio this morning about
some things we could do also.
Um
So, with that said, um I guess I have
two questions remaining on my list. Um
one is maybe for internal audit. Um we
got earlier in this year a couple
batches of mem- of the memos that they
send out and haven't seen those since
February. So, I was wondering if that
is a plan that we would get those in a
little more uh regular fashion rather
than than a quarterly or half update, um
So, I guess thoughts on that.
Mr. Mayor, Counselor, um Viola Perea for
the record. That portion of the OIR
group's uh scope of work was removed
from this more recent contract that we
implemented. We did expand the amount of
cases that the case types that were
going to be reviewed, but the individual
reviews are no longer going to take
place.
Okay, that's good to know.
Um
and then my other
question/comment, which I think I made
last time as well, um is when we were
talking about the geography
distribution of things, um
so appreciate that you brought up the
fact that the internal investigations
are always pegged to
uh
the department, which is not that
helpful geography-wise, um
but I was wondering if we could get some
insights maybe on
where the incident took place. So, if
there's an internal complaint that this
stop was handled poorly or there was use
of force,
we know that that didn't happen at the
police department. We know that that
happened somewhere else in the city. And
so, if we could get maybe get
information on where that happened. Um
and then likewise,
the zip codes are still maybe not that
useful as a measure, um just because in
this city specifically like
88005 covers a wide swath of town, and
so it's not very
the demographics of 88005 of 88011, you
know, vary substantially, um and so that
that kind of makes that level of
analysis a little less useful. So, maybe
going forward we could break it down
tighter by census tract or something
else. Um
thanks.
Yeah, thank you for those questions,
Council member. Is it Harris or James
Harris? Just Harris. Okay, thank you.
Um so first I just want point of
clarification um
with relation to the memos, the
individual case memos. So I just want to
clarify we are reviewing individual
cases.
And what you see in this report is at
the end there's an appendix that has all
of the cases sort of summarized. It's a
higher-level summary than we used to do.
So we're not doing those lengthy
individual case memos, but we are
reviewing every case. So just for
clarification in case anyone got
concerned that we're not doing
individual case reviews. We certainly
are still doing that.
Absolutely agree on the zip codes. Um we
have been challenged with this portion
of our scope of work since it started um
and on how to best present the data to
you all because we are somewhat limited
by the fact that the
addresses listed there. Um and so we can
certainly attempt to dig in more into
that um on a quarterly basis to provide
more nuanced information
um and be able to report back out to you
in the next quarterly report.
Is Is that something that maybe PD could
assist with? Um so when they get this
complaint that they could attach that
information to the case instead of you
having to
cuz you know, I'm sure they would they
would know offhand um
and and might be able to provide that.
Mayor and Council members, I'm kind of
thinking as I'm talking. They have They
know exactly what happened. So they have
all the information including the
address wherever the stop or the
incident happened. It's
it's how do you translate that into
something that's not identifying the
people involved,
Correct.
but still a usable metric other than zip
code. And I'm not sure what the
best solution is, but I I agree with
what you're saying. It's not very useful
the way it is.
And we can work out something to be able
to provide
something more nuanced perhaps. And And
it might even
Again, just thinking speaking as I'm
thinking, um we may interact with your
offices as well to kind of get a sense
of of what the community looks like. And
because we are not present here, um just
to make sure that we're not making any
assumptions based on data that are not
the as-lived experience as you all know
it.
Yeah, that'd be great. Thanks. That's
all I got, Mayor.
Mayor Pro Tem.
Thank you, Mayor.
Uh Teresa, Steven, thank you very much
for putting this together.
Uh Chief Story and the police
department, thank you for cooperating
through the process.
Um
I um
You mentioned and I'm encouraged that
you were looking at race and ethnicity
and that was balanced, a good balanced
approach.
Uh
I was wondering how um
What are your thoughts on drilling down
a little bit deeper and looking at
things like um sexual orientation,
gender, or age as well when you're
looking at that that mixed. I know that
uh you mentioned perception and customer
service as well. And sometimes, you
know, we we have a different We'll have
a different frame. And I think it's
important to consider those as well.
Yeah, thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. And
absolutely
valid to see how these play out across
all kinds of different breakdowns. I
think one of the things that we are
cautious of is that our sample size is
very small. So, we take great care not
to extrapolate decisions or conclusions
about how this police department
interacts with its community based on 9,
10, 20
interactions. Um And so, we want to be
cautious. We can certainly dig into the
data and provide those figures insofar
as, you know, they're not identifying
individuals. Um But we also do want to
be careful about the conclusions that
might be drawn about disproportionality
and so forth.
Excuse me.
And just to add to that and and again,
thank you for the question. Uh,
one of the things that we can do because
I appreciate the sensitivity that I
think you're driving at is is if we do
see uh any kind of a trend even in our
small sample size, that's something that
we will call out and talk to the
department about. We've had situations
in the past where a un you know, a
noticeable number of cases all revolved
around this same issue whether it was
civil standbys or something that the
department was bumping up against people
in a problematic way. If we saw
something related to the the nature of
the complainant that that kind of jumped
out over the course of a few cases, that
would be something we'd be interested in
and and would work with.
Appreciate you're looking into it and
the sensitivity. Another piece to look
at is, you know, as our relationship,
you know, continues, maybe there is a
3-year or 5-year sample size where, you
know, you could extrapolate a little bit
more on that as well. So, something to
consider. Thank you, Mayor.
Yep, we're good. I think there's a
member of the public that wanted to
share something. If you want to come up.
Thank you very much, Mayor, Vice Mayor,
Council members.
I'm coming because um it was real hard
to find the OIR uh OIR report.
you state your name?
me. Dan Romero.
Las Cruces resident. It's hard to find
the original contract for OIR.
Um,
I don't know if it's a yearly contract
or it started off as 3 to 5 year
contract.
Uh
looking at the OIR website, they show 49
agencies.
Las Cruces Police Department is one is
only one that report for so far this
year.
Um looking at the 2025 reporting, there
were five agencies uh that had police
oversight.
One city uh
had a police pursuit report and one city
report on the military equipment. So,
[clears throat]
it it seems like OIR is a a small small
shop, boutique shop.
Uh
there was in the So, and the other thing
is looking at the website, uh
there was uh two reports. The uh this
So, this is the ninth report so far. The
eighth report was okay. The seventh and
sixth report were the same report.
For
March of 2024, I mean for the year 2024.
So, their seventh report is on their
website is showing as the same report as
the sixth report. So, that needs to be
corrected for
for people like myself that want to find
the reports.
Uh
in the sixth report,
or maybe it was the eighth report. Uh
there was a discussion of an
two cases of an employee hotline
uh reports.
And I thought that was awfully odd that
uh OIR would choose to report on a
hotline employee hotline cases.
What it does is, you know, employee
hotline is very important for cities. It
allows employees to talk about their
supervisors or or incident. And I
thought it was really critical and bad
taste that OIR decided to report on
that. It it's small department. It's
easy to out whoever did the reporting or
whoever the complaint was.
Uh
I I also saw the same type of thing
that's occurring right now with with
what's going on with uh the CAT 3
reporting. I think it's not a good use
of of uh their resources.
Um
Does OIR use AI to go over the reports?
That would be important for us to know
whether we're getting their actual
opinion or something that's artificial.
And
how many uh
how many other laws it law agencies that
OIR is using right now is AZ actually
using category 3 as it reviews?
When we're talking about zip codes,
uh neighborhoods,
everybody lives in a neighborhood. That
might be the easiest way to report.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Viola.
Thank you, Mr. Mayor and councilors.
Viola Padeia for the record. Um this uh
just for clarification purposes, this is
the OIR Group's 10th semi-annual report.
The previous nine reports have been
posted on the city's transparency page.
Uh the public can look under the audit
page and you can access all nine reports
and any attachments that were um
provided for those reports to support
the findings on there.
Um also for clarification, the OIR
Group's um contract, excuse me, is a
5-year contract. It's an annual contract
with four annual renewals, so the
contract continues on uh for a 5-year
period. We just renewed them for a
second 5-year period. Um that was
effective this March. So, they will be
on board for that a next uh an
additional 5-year period.
Um as far as the hotline complaints, um
by ordinance neither internal audit nor
the Inspector General reviews um any
um
complaints, excuse me, that come through
regarding LCPD or the fire department.
So, any complaints that come through the
hotline that do involve uh a PD
employee, whether it's an officer or
civilian, those are automatically
forwarded over to the police department
for investigation, and then those
hotline complaints, per their contract,
are forwarded to the OIR Group for
review. So, that will be uh a common
practice if anything does come through
the hotline regarding a police officer.
Any questions?
All right, thank you, Paula. Any
questions?
Anything else?
No. Again, thank you uh
for your presentation. Uh
just want to say uh thank you to Chief
Story and the Las Cruces Police
Department for embracing the audit. You
know, that's how you can grow and
develop and learn and get the best
practices out there. And just you
mentioned the CALEA
uh accreditation. Well, we're proud and
we're very happy to say that the Las
Cruces Police Department has been
awarded the accreditation, and we're
happy to announce that. Congratulations,
Chief and the department. Thank you.
Okay, with that, that was the only item
we had for today, so a motion to
adjourn.
Move to adjourn.
Second.
This is on the motion to adjourn the
work session. Counselor McLer?
Yes.
Counselor Matias is absent. Counselor
Harris?
Yes.
Counselor Bencomo?
Yes.
Counselor Curran?
Yes.
Counselor Muñoz?
Yes.
And Mayor?
Yes.
Mhm.