Violence in Chihuahua:  Still a Bad Year

Twenty Eight Police Killed in 2018, Twelve So Far This year

Diario:  Last Sunday morning at 3 a.m. Leonel Escobar, 24, was killed by gunfire in Col. Insurgentes, Juárez, two hours after his shift as a special agent ended.  He was the twelfth police officer killed so far this year in the state of Chihuahua.

Readers will recall that the assassination on March 3 of the sub-director of the Juárez Police, Adrian Matsumoto while he was driving with members of his family in Casas Grandes.  Three police officers were killed in a single attack using military-grade weapons in Gomez Farias (Northwest of Chihuahua City), on March 8.  Seven other police officers were gunned down so far this year.

Foto:  Carlos Sanchez, Diario de Juárez

Guest Column

Legislature Struggles to Clean Up Mental Health Mess

Richard McGee

Richard McGee is retired, and resides in Las Cruces.

In June 2013 the Martinez administration, asserting that an audit had revealed 15 nonprofit groups providing mental health treatment for the poor had over-billed Medicaid by as much as $36 million, cancelled contracts with these groups.  Several companies from Arizona came in to replace them.

But reporting from the Santa Fe New Mexican revealed that months before the audits were complete the Martinez administration was already paying at least one of the Arizona companies for salaries, travel, and legal fees.  One payment to Agave Health, Inc., an Arizona firm, was made before the audit had even begun.  The affected companies were not given a chance to reply before their contracts were withdrawn.  Since then four Arizona non-profits contracted to fill the positions of the New Mexico firms left the state, leaving many folks high and dry, without access to mental health care.  The state's providers were subsequently cleared of charges of wrongdoing, except for one extremely small case of an overpayment.

The movida by the Martinez administration was highly inappropriate, partly because it was so lacking in tranparency, partly because it was unfair for the accused organizations not to be able to respond to the accusations before losing their contracts; and partly because negotiations with the firms receiving new contracts were made prior to the accusations.

Several bills were introduced by Sen. Mary Kay Papen to try to restore some semblance of order to the mess left in the wake of this longstanding scandal.

One of them, endorsed by the New Mexico Finance Authority Oversight Committee, makes certain behavioral health care clinic eligible for capital funding

It provides for the “repair, renovation or construction of a behavioral health facility; purchase of land; or acquisition of capital equipment of a long-term nature; a nonprofit behavioral health facility that  is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation for federal income tax purposes and serves primarily sick and indigent patients; or (2) a behavioral health care clinic that operates in a rural or other health care underserved area of the state, that is owned by a county or municipality and that meets department requirements for eligibility.”

The bill has passed the Senate and has received a "do pass" recommendations from two House committees, including the House Appropriations committee.  A lot more needs to be done to make mental health care work will in New Mexico.  This moves the ball forward.

The 2019  Legislative Session in New Mexico:  Three Comments

We will leave Chihuahua alone with its grief for a few days.  Our dynamic, potentially important partner to the South is still reeling from violence, hoping a National Guard might stem the tide, and praying the exploding drug addiction among young people can be reversed.  But before leaving, one thought:

Isn't it time state government began spending some energy devising a foreign policy toward Chihuahua?  That is to say, a coherent, public, border policy of mutual benefit to both sides that consists of more than Wall trash-talk?  Imagine Beto as Governor of Texas.  Whatever else you think of him, as governor he would change the national conversation from the border as evil to the border as opportunity.  Shouldn't New Mexico step into this imaginary space as well?  How about some new ideas for the border?  NAFTA was a long long time ago.  Is New Mexico capable of regional leadership?  I was hopeful with Big Bill, but, most will agree, he just made things worse on the border, among other reasons by sticking his nose in Chihuahua politics way back in 2003.  I was hoping to help Susana with border issues when I became a member of her cabinet, but I was frozen out from the very beginning and the border, for her, was simply a photo op.  Is it time, now, to give this another try?

Three Comments on the NM Legislature:

First the good news:  There is energy in the crop of newly-elected legislators.  After eight years of deliberate non-governance, followed by eight years of expensive smoke-and-mirroring from a president-wannabe, followed by eight years of sullen, petulant, ineptness, the state is languishing at the bottom of the barrel in just about everything citizens want from government.  The election of new faces--any faces--in New Mexico is an indicator of a public desperation not often captured by pollsters, whose major interests lie in handicapping the horse race, not in improving the downs experience for the average Joe. The earnestness and lack of cynicism, so far, from the new crop is good news.

The bad news is that earnestness is not enough, and the adults in the room, that is to say, the Senate, with members in both parties, needs to find a way in the waning days to encourage the enthusiasm--and the forces behind them--while firmly steering the ship away from the shoals when the children, mischievous or innocent, head that way.  This is not a new role for the Senate; indeed, it seems to function best in this parental posture.

Second:  major proposed legislation this year seems to offer symbolic gratification, feel-good stuff, not sound governance.  Adding $400 million (17%) to public education sounds like a serious investment for a state ranking 50.  But Richardson already threw money at schools 15 years ago and the achievement scores of students--the real problem of education in New Mexico--did not go up and the rankings went down from 47  to 48 or 49. Salaries were tied to improved credentials of teachers, but improved credentials did not improve student scores.  The new legislation. likewise, has nothing in it to suggest a serious accounting to the public for this huge expenditure.  Many states spending much less per pupil than we do rank much higher.  Arizona and Utah are good examples, right next door.

New cabinet agency for early childhood?  Sounds good, but administratively expensive, and likely to further fragment an already highly fragmented, dysfunctional, system. What kind of workforce will New Mexico need 20-40 years from now?  What are our educational institutions doing to get us there?  What goals for improving student achievement might we realistically be able to meet in the next ten years?  Cut the ethnic achievement gaps in half?  Catch up to the national average scores in math and reading?  Triple the number of college graduates in STEM degrees?  These questions, being asked in many states, aren't even on the table in New Mexico.  But until we wrestle with them we will lurch from fad to fad, with little to show for it.  This year it was early childhood.  Decades ago it was "bilingual" education. Twenty years ago it was charter schools.   There is no bilingual education in New Mexico today.  We don't even encourage bilingualism, in spite of a constitutional mandate to do so.  And after many years of experience, charter schools, as a whole, perform no better than public schools.  New Mexico has sunk to 50 out of 50 in education and we have no plan or timetable to get us back to 48, much less a mediocre 25. Current proposals amount to an expensive wish and a prayer, requiring no serious effort on anybody's part

Third, what appears to have captured the public imagination so far this year in politics is not the move to give teachers a raise, not the early childhood education commotion, not the fixing of the Susana-led wreckage of mental health delivery systems in New Mexico.  It is the proposal to make it harder for some people, presumably those with risky profiles, to buy a gun.  This is the issue that will be remembered.  Mora, the bluest of blue counties, is just the latest in a rash of counties drawing a line in the sand, and expect some of the leaders who jumped into the sanctuary issue to be running in primaries a year from right now.  Perhaps even more important, this drives a deep wedge between Hispanic citizens everywhere and the Democratic Party, just as the abortion issue alienated hundreds of thousands of Hispanics who resented the imposition of national Democratic themes into local New Mexico mores.  Bringing Washington issues to New Mexico seldom pays off.  Hispanics were open to Johnson in 1994; they were open to Susana in 2010.  What has the Democratic Party done for them lately?

Death by Gunfire of Adrián Matsumoto

Commander of the Juárez Municipal Police Intelligence Group

He Will be Honored in Nuevo Casas Grandes in a Ceremony Today

One Man Shot Dead, Another Arrested, Suspected of Participating in the Ambush

From Reports in Diario de Juárez:

It was Sunday afternoon.  Commander Matsumoto, 42, had taken a day off from his job in Juárez and went home to be with his family in Nuevo Casas Grandes.  At about 4:30 p.m., he was driving a white Dodge Ram pickup with his family, apparently after a Sunday drive, when he noticed he was surrounded by vehicles.  He had been careless, even reckless, given who he was.  Now he was in an ambush.

To protect his family from harm's way he got out of the cab, walked forward, and stood in the middle of the street.  His body was riddled with at least 50 bullets while his family watched.

Matsumoto was trained in the U.S. for intelligence investigation, SWAT operations, and first aid, as well as in Mexico for police work.  He had a long career in Chihuahua, in various jobs including second in command at Cereso prison in Juárez, Director of Municipal Public Security in Nuevo Casas Grandes, state police investigator, and second in command of Municipal Police in Juárez.

Controversy had followed him everywhere (click here) .  He was threatened in publicly displayed narco-mantas for "working with groups that operate in the city.". He was accused of abuse of authority and making arbitrary arrests.  In an incident that took place last December he was accused of bursting into a household with other agents, shooting a man, and arresting five men, a woman, and two children.  After learning that the people arrested had been beaten, the judge released them.  They claimed items in the household had been stolen.  On January 29 he killed a man, presumably a burglar, who, finding himself surrounded by police pulled out a gun.

Nuevo Casas Grandes is not at this juncture a good place to be careless about security, especially if you have been a cop there.  The Juárez and Sinaloa cartels operate continually in much of the Western portion of Chihuahua, sometimes competing against each other, sometimes assaulting police.

I am not qualified to render a serious evaluation of Matsumoto's contributions to law enforcement in Juárez. I do know that he represented a different kind of police commander, one with far more professional training and commitment, than those of, say twenty years ago, one with a distinctive kind of style, verve, that many found appealing.  His aplomb, facing unexpected, immediate death, will be remembered.

Mexico National Guard Amendment Goes to State Legislatures

As predicted, the Mexican Chamber of Deputies on Thursday almost unanimously, approved the constitutional amendment to create a National Guard, composed of federal police and military personnel.  The measure now will be sent to the 31 state legislatures, where it seems likely to be passed by at least the 16 legislatures required to include it in the constitution.  Citizen groups in Chihuahua are exected to ask the president , in Chihuahua on Saturday, to send the National Guard to areas suffering violence, such as the community of Rubio, just North of Cuauhtemoc, the site of attacks on public figures from criminal organizations.  It is unclear at this point how long it might take the National Guard to be constituted as an operational unit, should it pass quickly through 16 state legislatures.

State of the State Address Today in Chihuahua, as AMLO visits Capital

Attacks on Police, Homicides, Continue Throughout Much of the State

Juárez February Closes With Three More Homicides

**PAN Governor Javier Corral will deliver his second state of the state address in Chihuahua today, as hundreds of families grieve for the victims of recent homicides in large portions of the state.

• Much of the area around Copper Canyon is under control of organized crime, and large portions of the Western part of the state--the area from Cuauhtémoc (in the Menonite areas) to Ignacio Zaragoza, Madero, Temósachic, Gomez Farias, and up to Nueva Casas Grandes and  Casas Grandes--has been subject to a barrage of lethal attacks against constituted authority.  Juárez is undergoing a spike in homicides with levels not seen since 2011.  The fear level a few months ago among police officers was such that in the most affected areas many simply refused to go to work
• In Ignacio Zaragoza a trustee of the municipality was kidnapped.  Last year the city treasurer was kidnapped.  The administrative officer for the Municipal police in Cuauhtémoc and his bodyguard were killed on Tuesday.
• AMLO is scheduled to appear at 11 a.m. this morning in Chihuahua, at the Plaza del Angel, for a ceremonial event inaugurating a pension plan for disabled persons.

**An encobijado was found in Felipe Angeles, the neighborhood just across the river from UTEP, early this morning.  A man was shot to death at 4 p.m. yesteday afternoon at the same location in Quintas del Real where the night watchman for a gated residential area was killed. And a man was executed last night by gunfire two blocks from Oscar Flores, South of the Airport.