SOLVING POLICE BRUTALITY AT ALL THREE LEVELS
My name is Andres Valdez. I’m the Executive Director of Vecinos United, founded in 1989. We were founded for the purpose of enhancement of low to moderate people. From the beginning we were multiracial and multicultural and we continued in that tradition with many successes.
The organization achieved changes in the New Mexico Constitution and the public regulations commission. In other cases we’ve been able to cause institutional change in police oversight. We were some of the founders and originators of pushing for civilian review of law enforcement at several levels.
The administrative level, the criminal area of law, and the civil area of law.
We need all the support we can get..
Andres Valdez
Vecinos United
11608 Constitution N.E.
Albuquerque, NM, 87112 USA
Administration Area of Oversight.
First of all there has to be an understanding of how we are pursuing as we are and originators in the fact that police brutality starts with the condoning of human rights violations by every single city councillor and every single person at the city, county level, every single mayor, every single district attorney, attorney and government. They all have the responsibility to protect the citizens of human civil rights violations by our own government.
None of them have fulfilled their responsibility and have condoned this behavior.
Human and Civil rights are in fact part of law and what they are doing when they condone; they are condoning violations of the law.
Because of that level of hypocrisy it’s the amount of work that we need to do to fix things because all that hypocrisy needs to be taken out of there.
We need all the support we can get..
Andres Valdez
Vecinos United
11608 Constitution N.E.
Albuquerque, NM, 87112 USA
Criminal Area of Oversight.
We need standards of prosecution for elected officials who condone human and civil rights violations and along with those standards should be consequences that are paid when the rights are violated.
It must be punishable at minimum by removal from office and criminal charges. Prosecution needs to be pursued by officials who condone mayors, district attorneys, police chiefs, or anybody who has authority to fix things yet turns the other way.
Right now we are pursuing several levels of reform and changes. One is because district attorneys across the U.S. have shown that they’re partial, in favor of, and support the murder of citizens by police and have done this institutionally. Because of that we are proposing complete removal of the district attorney to review police shootings and excessive use of force.
We are doing this by working on legislation that would create a special investigative unit inside the D.A. to review and prosecute the shootings. In addition all of this needs to be done in front of the public.
Secret grand juries needs to be changed to preliminary hearings which are public. This is the best way to have transparency in what we are pursuing.
We need all the support we can get..
Andres Valdez
Vecinos United
11608 Constitution N.E.
Albuquerque, NM, 87112 USA
Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement
Civilians should if it is done right, have the authority to fire police officers found to have used excessive force and of course shootings and have the authority to refer over to D.a. or proper authorities for prosecution.
Two Forms of Civilian Oversight:
Boards would be made up of civilians, no police officers, or people who have a potential for partiality for police, would ever sit on this. First, the board should be elected by the people. Second, the board would be a jury style civilian oversight of law enforcement. People are selected at random on a case by case basis. There’s even less of a chance of corruption on a civilian board.
Improve more civilian oversight.
We are continuing to monitor.
An appointee hired to oversee cases of police brutality, shootings, and excessive force was paid 4.5 million dollars to oversee a consent decree
There’s a situation where a U.S. Marshal shot and killed a youth. Reports from his attorney and front page news say it was execution style. He was never a suspect and authorities committed a mistaken identity.
We need all the support we can get..
Andres Valdez
Vecinos United
11608 Constitution N.E.
Albuquerque, NM, 87112 USA
Reform and Transparency.
Today, the Department of Justice is asking for transparency of cities.
And, legislators are going to allow the creation of a special investigative unit which is to be heard during the interim portion between legislative sessions.
HR 429
U.S. Representative Michelle Lujan-Grisham is a cosponsor of HR 429 which would have police shootings investigated in a public preliminary hearing and appoint independent prosecutors to review shootings. Sponsored by U.S. Georgia Congressman Henry "Hank" C. Johnson, Jr.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d114:HR00429:@@@T
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d114:HR00429:@@@T
HR 429 has been held in committee for over a year.
Presently, the anti police brutality movement is stuck on being outraged and rightfully so. But, it needs to transform to what’s going to be done.
We need all the support we can get..
Andres Valdez
Vecinos United
11608 Constitution N.E.
Albuquerque, NM, 87112 USA
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