Walt Rubel Commentary: Leave cadets out of power struggle

I welcome an independent audit of the Dona Ana County Sheriff’s Office, but question if that’s what we’ll get from the investigation that has been ordered and will be paid for by the County Commission.

Whatever it finds, the audit won’t resolve a power struggle between the county board and the sheriff’s office that dates back at least to the days of Sheriff Todd Garrison. Former County Manager Julia Brown served documents suing former County Sheriff Enrique Vigil while he was in the middle of a live TV interview.

The latest dispute involves the regrettable decision of Sheriff Kim Stewart to use new graduates of the Dona Ana County Sheriff’s Academy as pawns in this ongoing power struggle. She temporarily refused to commission the graduating cadets as an act of retaliation against the board.

Stewart was upset because the county had blocked her efforts to decommission two veteran members of the department. This is an area where an independent review could provide more assistance than a court order.

Stewart, who has won twice in countywide elections, earned far more votes than any single member of the County Commission. And, she is a trained law enforcement officer who has a far better understanding of what qualities she needs from her most senior officers than members of the County Commission.

The standard county merit system may make sense when it comes to bean counters, but I’m not sure it should apply to law enforcement.

At the same time, we’ve seen abuses in the past where unqualified cronies were elevated to positions in the Sheriff’s Office that they did not deserve and could not do. The County Commission needs to have some ability to control wasteful spending in all departments.

I don’t know enough about the facts to make a judgment as to which side was right in the case of the two senior officers, but Sheriff Stewart was wrong to retaliate in a way that was harmful to the young, eager cadets who are, hopefully, just starting out on a long career of much-needed service to our county. 

In an email defending her decision, Stewart listed a series of indignities against her which she said she did not deserve. Fair enough. But, those graduating cadets didn’t deserve to get dragged into this fight.

The most harmful part of all of this was the public disclosure that unnamed cadets had allegedly failed their psychological evaluations. That unfairly casts a shadow against the entire graduating class.

All of this comes at a time of deteriorating public safety, when the recruitment and retention of officers is critical to any crime-prevention plans moving forward. The Legislature has included $10 million in this year’s budget to help local law enforcement agencies hire more officers.

This public spat will be damaging to not only the current graduating class, but efforts to recruit new classes in the future.  

I had hoped that the selection of a new county manager would provide the opportunity for a fresh start, but that clearly has not happened. That’s going to require a new sheriff. And even then the tension between the board and the sheriff that is built into the system will still remain.


Walter Rubel can be reached at [email protected].

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