Robert F. Kennedy said, “Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.”
We embrace our criminals and insist on mediocrity in our law enforcement.
Those Rio Arribans applauding former sheriff James Lujan’s move to state-operated housing are sitting on their hands today. As expected, Lujan’s incarceration left a void that would likely be filled by a higher ranking person remaining in Lujan’s fiefdom.
We dodged a bullet by Undersheriff Martin Trujillo being ineligible to serve. His trial is still upcoming. However, there also was no good candidate in the remaining upper echelons.
Rio Arriba County Commissioners of course punted and gave Major Billy Merrifield the top cop spot. Merrifield has a colorful past and left law enforcement for a while.
Lujan’s ascent to the sheriff position gave Merrifield a new start. He was quickly promoted from deputy, to captain and then major. We don’t know what tests, if any, are required for promotion in the Sheriffi’s Office. We assume it’s how many times you said “yes sir” to Lujan.
We do know they are much more transparent when they’re not criticized nor asked difficult questions.
A recent story in the Rio Grande SUN about a woman filing a complaint against Merrifield was the result of months of repeated requests, which were finally answered by “Public Information Officer” Capt. Lorenzo Aguilar asking us to send the request to Trujillo. He dutifully ignored us for a month and finally agreed we could come inspect the “investigation.”
True to form Trujillo never investigated the incident. Also true to form when we inspected the sparse documents we were questioned about taking pictures of them and video would not be provided, we could only review it in-house.
Most disappointing was Merrifield’s response to the story. He said we wasted our time. It is never a waste of time when law enforcement is accused of abuse and it is properly investigated. The Sheriff’s Office should treat all complaints seriously. The validity of the complaint is established by an investigation, not by Merrifield’s view of the incident. For Merrifield to say it was a waste of time tells you what kind of sheriff he will be.
The woman who was the subject of the alleged harassment said recently when she called E-911 for a completely different situation, she was told by deputies she “watches too many movies” and “we know who you are.”
That’s not law enforcement and that kind of behavior flows from the top. Obviously the on-scene deputies are blindly loyal to Merrifield. Here we go again.
We don’t know what management, leadership and organizational skills Merrifield has. He’ll need them all to perform actual law enforcement in Rio Arriba County. And he’ll get no help from Trujillo.