In these tales of the tapes, the cops look good
Police officers find themselves under the microscope more and more in these days of increasingly commonplace video and audio recordings, from the cameras and recorders cops are required to have to omnipresent cellphone cameras wielded by the public. The recordings often provide a level playing field when it comes to helping decide who did what in volatile situations that end in highprofile shootings, other violence or contested grounds for arrest.
But it can also be interesting and illuminating to check in on more routine cases where there’s recorded evidence of how police officers do their jobs.
In recent weeks, the Journal has reviewed police audio and video recordings in instances where Santa Fe area officers come across as, well, patient and professional.
One case involved domestic violence allegations last year against a now-former Los Alamos National Laboratory official. Two SFPD officers — one male, one female — responded after a neighbor reported seeing a woman wrestling with a man outdoors and the man blocking her from driving away.
The woman said she was tackled and had to struggle with the man to try to hold onto her keys and cellphone, and that he sent a fabricated email to himself to make it look like she was trying to ruin him. But she was reluctant to identify her boyfriend, or ex-boyfriend, because he has a “big job.”
The two officers ask her if she’s OK and gently urge her to provide more information. “If he’s doing this kind of stuff now, who knows what he may do tomorrow?” the male officer asks. “... At the very least, this should be documented.”
“It always starts gradually... ,” the female cop adds. “You shouldn’t be concerned about him, you should be concerned about you. He’s the one who did it.”
The officers eventually get accounts from both parties, conclude that the woman’s version of the altercation is believable and charge the man (the effort resulted in no convictions as the woman later indicated she didn’t want to pursue the case in court).
Then there’s the (only most) recent drunken driving case against Scott Owens. He’s the local citizen who was driving a Jeep Cherokee that collided with a Subaru carrying five teenagers on Old Las Vegas Highway in 2009. Four of the Santa Fe teens died. Owens’ defense admitted he was driving drunk, but successfully raised doubts about his role in causing the near-head-on collision, suggesting that teens were driving erratically themselves. The jury acquitted Owens of vehicular homicide.
In February, Owens — for the second time since the fatal crash — was arrested for allegedly driving drunk again. Video of his post-arrest questioning shows a Santa Fe officer repeatedly trying to get Owens to give a yes or no answer to whether he’ll take a breath test to determine blood alcohol content. Owens just repeats the same answer, over and over — that he wasn’t driving when officers found him parked after a woman reported him for stalking. The officer doing the questioning displays Jobian patience before concluding that he’d take Owens’ non-answer as a “no.”
Finally, there was the arrest on March 14 of a Santa Fe emergency room doctor for DWI. There’s video of first responders cutting him out of his SUV after it rolled, also on Old Las Vegas Highway. The doc tells them he’s scared of being arrested, then tries to talk Santa Fe County deputies out of charging him because “I’m a physician and I have responsibilities ... . Do you know how big a deal this is for me?”
One of the deputies at the scene, Clay Cullison, gave the doctor a perfect response: “You almost hit a guy head-on right there. What would you have done as a physician if you would have hit him head-on and killed him, or maimed him for life? You almost hit a (16-yearold) kid … . Look at your truck. Your truck is totaled. That can be repaired or replaced. … So, no, I’m not going to let you go home. We’re going to go down to the Sheriff’s Office, do a breath test and we’ll go from there, OK?”
The test found the doctor’s blood alcohol content was three times New Mexico’s presumed level of intoxication.
So, yes, recordings have shown officers making bad decisions or worse. But they also can prove that cops can be pretty good at their jobs.