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Our Mayoral Election Series Concludes; ‘Officer-Induced Jeopardy’

Aerial view of downtown Santa Fe, New Mexico at sunset, featuring adobe buildings, lush trees, and a prominent tower with a flag.

Something wicked this way comes… 

Wait. That’s something else and, of course, I am not Ray Bradbury. What I meant to say is that Election Day rapidly approaches — Nov. 4, for those keeping score at home. We’ve been busy for the last several weeks interviewing candidates in two of the most closely watched contests in this year’s cycle: the mayor’s races in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. 

Both fields are crowded, with eight people running in Santa Fe and six more in Albuquerque. That means there have been a lot of interviews. To watch ‘em all, you can hop over to our Youtube page. And for an explanation about how we designed our coverage, I wrote about that last month. 

In this week’s show, we conclude our interview series with two candidates in that Santa Fe race who probably won’t be grabbing lunch, coffee or drinks together anytime soon: City Councilor Michael Garcia and County Commissioner Justin Greene. Some bad blood — and perhaps dirty pool — going on between the two spilled into public view earlier this week via the pages of the Santa Fe New Mexican. I won’t belabor the bones of contention here, though we did ask Greene about the kerfuffle. 

As with all our candidate interviews, we tried to stay focused on illuminating policy positions and ideas that will help voters at the polls. We hope you came away at least a little bit more educated about the candidates running for these important offices. 

Switching gears… 

The back half of this week’s show features a story many months in the making. It centers around a fatal police shooting in Torrance County back in 2022. I first learned that the family of the victim, Travis Boawn, was suing the county last fall. They allege that sheriff’s deputies violated his rights under the relatively new state Civil Rights Act when they shot him nine times — 90 seconds after arriving at the home Boawn shared with his mother. 

I spent most of my journalism career as an investigative reporter focused on the criminal legal system for several print, television and digital news organizations. In that work, I dedicated many gallons of ink and millions of pixels to police violence, which has plagued this state more than almost any other over the course of the past few decades. One concept that’s come up again and again is “officer-induced jeopardy” — that’s when the police pick a fight, end it with violence, then claim self defense. 

All too often, this idea manifests when the victim of that violence is in the midst of a mental health crisis.
 
Boawn had been living with paranoid schizophrenia for many years before deputies killed him, and officer-induced jeopardy is at the heart of his family’s lawsuit. They hope the New Mexico Civil Rights Act will ultimately force police officers — and the governments that employ them — to consider the minutes and hours before an encounter that could lead to violence, as opposed to the mere seconds required now. And they hope those who do not make such considerations will be held accountable under the state Constitution. 

This is a different kind of story for us, one we haven’t had the resources to tell in this way previously. We’re grateful to Boawn’s family for trusting us with it and for all the time they spent telling us who Travis was, what they lost on Valentine’s Day in 2022 and what they hope comes of their case. 

And I am personally grateful to Cailley Chella, the newest member of our team, without whom this story would have looked very different — and not nearly as good. 

-Jeff Proctor, Executive Producer