Target Heh - The 5th Floor Fiasco

It's been fascinating to watch APD's PR machine over the last few days. For those of you in the business or just curious as to how it works, this is exactly how you don't handle a public relations crisis. In fact, APD should have fired their spinmeister John Walsh, after his disastrous news conference Wednesday evening.

Of course you know we're talking about the 5th floor's reaction to Sergeant Paul Heh's very public objection to the new APD contract. Their first reaction was an attempt to scare him into silence with an IA investigation. It's a tactic that our Eyes tell us is commonly used by the brass and one that is generally successful.

It's easy to terminate an officer for a violation of the SOP. Officers deal with a hostile public on a daily basis. No one is thankful to be arrested and when an officer shows up it is not uncommon for some to be arrested. So finding a complaint is a simple matter of looking through an officer's arrest records.

This time the threat of an Internal Affairs investigation didn't work because the council, 770 KKOB, and eventually the rest of the media got wind of their little scheme and exposed it. Our Eyes tell us that Chief Schultz spent a considerable amount of time in the Almighty Alcalde's office yesterday morning getting his um... behind chewed and got a repeat performance later in the day when KKOB's Jim Villanucci picked up the story for the first three hours of his show.

(Sidebar)
We've been spending a lot of time talking about the 5th floor. You've got to remember that the Chief of Police is basically an at-will employee of the mayor. As a result, he takes his marching orders from the mayor himself. The chaos over at APD is certainly the result of mismanagement but it is the direct responsibility of the mayor.
(End Sidebar)

Today, the 5th floor brain trust tried yet another tactic... plant a story with The Journal's T.J. Wilham about Sergeant Heh's 2007 earnings. According to the Journal - which curiously has not posted the story online - the sergeant made over $108,000 last year with over $43,000 of overtime.

What Wilham doesn't tell you is why a sergeant in the Albuquerque Police Department makes that kind of money. Our Eyes tell us that Sergeant Heh is an exceptional DWI hound. In fact, he's almost a one man DWI unit picking up somewhere over 20 DWIs per month on average. Since the sergeant works graveyard a shift from 10:00 pm to 8:00 am Tuesday through Saturday, he's in court during the day.

Metro Court schedules trials between 8:30 am and even as late as 9:00 pm. Officers are also required to attend pretrial hearings, MVD hearings and seizure hearings - any one of which a failure to appear results in the defendant going free. In other words, officers must attend all of the hearings. To make matters even more fun, trials and hearings are scheduled by three different agencies - the court, the city, and the state.

Because DWI officers and graveyard officers work at night when the courts are closed, these hearings always take place during their off hours. Guess what that means... overtime and lots of it.

Sergeant Heh is incredibly dedicated to his job and his mission. In fact, our Eyes tell us he's almost a fixture at Metro Court. There can be little doubt about Sergeant Heh's honor and dedication just listen to the interview from KKOB that we posted earlier this week (read/hear it here) or read Officer Aria's post from Wednesday (read it here).

The fact that an officer with 21 years on chooses to work grave says it all. A senior sergeant with that amount of time on can have any shift pretty much anywhere in the department. But this sergeant chooses to do the hard work at the most difficult time of day and refuses to ignore his responsibility to follow through in court or in hearings.

T.J. Wilham's story is really about trying to destroy an APD officer's credibility in the media. Our Eyes tell us that this story was planted by the 5th floor and thus it serves their purpose.

The problem is that in their anger and desire for retribution, they decided to try and silence the outspoken sergeant before they tried to tarnish him. The story has moved waaaaay beyond a contract dispute between senior officers. It's become a story about how the Albuquerque Police Department does business.

Sergeant Heh isn't the first officer to have been silenced through intimidation. However, he should be the last. The only difference here is that Sergeant Heh caught the attention of the media and the heavy-handed tactics of the APD brass were exposed. The simple fact is a senior officer like Sergeant Heh is the type of seasoned officer that you want to keep on the force - not force out through threats and intimidation.

This fifth floor fiasco and public relations nightmare is the direct result of arrogance and foolishness. Arrogance to believe that they had the absolute authority and ability to destroy one of their officers for standing up for what they believe. Foolishness because of their inept handling of the situation.

There's a saying that an organization takes on the attributes of its leader so it's no surprise that APD is being run through intimidation and fear. They've taken on the attributes of their leader - Mayor Martin Chavez.

Sergeant Heh should be decorated for his dedication and honor, not destroyed because he disagrees with an administration that could care less about the employees they lead. It'll be interesting to see what these 5th floor fools come up with next because we know they won't be wise enough to stop here.

Whose Foolin' Who

There it was right there on the front page of the Tribune, Marty Called Out. The essence of the story is that Marty was caught with his microphone down by Councilors O'Malley and Cadigan when as part of his weekly call in show on 770 KKOB AM a caller named "Linda" called in to bash the council and pledge her support for Marty's vetoes. The only problem, "Linda" is actually Marty's CFO, Gail Reese.

(Sidebar)
This is also the show that set off Mt. Villanucci the following Monday, when the mayor in essence called anyone who had timed the yellow lights at photo enforced scam-era intersections kooks. You can hear the whole show here.
(End Sidebar)

This tactic is nothing new for the mayor on high. Mayor Chavez or his confederates actually tried to skew the results of the Eye Poll just a couple of weeks ago. Later that same week the 11th floor was trying to orchestrate a call in campaign aimed at talk show host Jim Villanucci. The objective of the campaign was to try to fool listeners in to believing that Marty's scam-eras enjoyed wide support out there in radio land.

Villanucci and producer Richard Edes were not fooled for a moment and dropped all of the lines in order to allow a more representative sample of the general population to get through. In other words, callers without Marty's talking points.

It should come as no surprise that since the mayor tried to stack the Villanucci deck; he would have his cronies call in to his show as well. That's exactly what happened June 16th. We've uploaded the call in question so take a listen. You'll notice a couple of things about the call, the distinctiveness of the caller's voice and the condescension oozing out of the mayor.

When the Trib reporter Peter Rice confronted Ms. Reese about the call you'll note her first response was to spin saying, "I might have, yes." Then to make the ridiculous claim that, "[i]t's not something I would necessarily remember doing." Rrrrright.... We often call radio talk shows and find it hard to remember calling.

When Ms. Reese realized that she'd pretty much been caught cold, she fell into defense mode and claimed that "Linda" is her "alter-ego name." Alter-Ego name?! Now Ms. Reese seems to have a dual personality to go along with her poor memory.

What is it about the Chavez administration that requires its members to spin or everything from scam-era crashes, to yellow light timing, to call-in shows? Does the Almighty Mayor think so little of all of us peons down here that he can believe that we'll buy all of this? If you've got 40 minutes, listen to the entire show. Listen carefully to the mayor's attitude. Listen to how he treats his critics. To us it's offensive and couldn't be more condescending.

A couple of things are absolutely sure... The council and the mayor are heading towards an all-out war, and the public is on to the mayor's act. Seems like for the first time since Marty took office (the first time and the second) he's beginning to lose control of the public and the media. More importantly, he's not foolin' anyone... for a change.

Cookin' the Books - Restricting Access to the Ingredients

On Tuesday, 770 KKOB AM afternoon drive time host Jim Villanucci confronted city officials with statistics that indicated that the number of accidents at intersections with photo enforcement has actually increased since the scam-eras were installed. The performance by the 5 "heavy hitters" (Kevin Broderick, John Castillo, Joe Bowdich, Ron Hetes, and John Walsh) was less than stellar. When confronted with Mr. Villanucci's statistics, not one of his guests could refute their accuracy. The show left listeners even more suspicious of the scam-era program and the city's motives.

If you're in government and your sacred cash cow is threatened by statistics that prove the cow's milk is sour... what do you do? The answer is simple, come up with your own set of statistics. In other words, cook the books.

Our Eyes tell us that Chief Schultz has the 5th floor working on changing the criteria used for counting accidents at intersections. Under this new scheme, only accidents that take place inside the box formed by the crosswalks would be considered accidents at that intersection. The rest would be reported as occurring on the street leading to the intersection.

As you can tell, the new criteria would drastically cut down on the number of accidents that are attributed to a specific intersection by eliminating almost all rear end collisions. This approach makes scam-eras look more effective because rear end collisions increase dramatically at photo enforced intersections.

Statistics can be made to say whatever you want them to. The Eyes have it that the 5th floor's master plan is to re-work all of the red light scam-era accident statistics under the new criteria, and then get back on to the Villanucci show in a couple of weeks to "prove" that photo enforcement works.

We all understand the concept of apples and oranges here. These "new" numbers will be worthless as a true comparison because they are intentionally framed in such a way as to make them create the impression of a predetermined favorable result. Sometimes we call this "spin." (here's another example of spin that came from our pictured chef Trish Hoffman) Other times - like in grade school - we simply call it lying.

Restricting Access to the Ingredients
Apparently there are too many cooks in APD's kitchen and not all of them will cook the books the way the 5th floor wants them to. This week's furor over the scam-eras has APD brass worried about leak containment. We're not talking about information about on-going investigations... we're talking about information regarding what's going on in the rarified air of the 5th floor; information regarding policy that should be available to the public.

So in order to stop the leaks, information will now only be given to those ranking lieutenant or higher. Everyone below will be on a need to know basis only.

We'd remind APD brass that this centralized control model was used for decades by the Soviet military and their client states. Ultimately, it was proved ineffective because the troops in the field were unable to make decisions without consulting higher-ups.

Effective decisions are most easily and accurately made by those in the field, not those ensconced in an area command. Giving those officers all of the training and information they need (the necessary ingredients) is essential to efficient and effective department operation.

Spin Mode

The Mayor's got his troops out defending the scam-era system... right now on 770 KKOB AM. According to host Jim Villanucci, John Walsh contacted him at 2:15 pm this afternoon offering to send over a few guests to talk about the system. Could this be in reaction to the Rising Tide? We think so.

This is no doubt damage control and the troops from the city are doing their level best to spin this. So far, when pressed on issues like rear-end collisions these "heavy hitters" from downtown are doing a less than credible job of making their case. Take a listen at http://www.770kob.com/KKOB_OnlineRadioStream.html. If nothing else it's entertaining listening.

----- Update 4:00 pm -----
Who knew this would turn into a live blog? It's hard to tell who's saying what, but one thing is clear... these guys are tasked with supporting this policy and defending it is difficult for them. Remember, they all work for Marty and their job is to salute and carry out his honor's orders. One example in particular is Captain Hetes. APD SOP requires him to support any ordinance regardless of his personal feelings on the matter when he represents the department. He is literally prohibited from speaking out against established policy.

----- Update 4:30 pm -----
This is what happens when the discussion doesn't include anyone who has the authority to make policy. The city crew can't admit that there could be a problem. Meanwhile, the public picks up on their defensiveness and the perception is that they are being spun. It stops mattering whether the "heavy-hitters" from the city are telling the truth or not... trust is already lost.

----- Update 5:00 pm -----
We're surprised that these guys made it through two whole hours without a call from the 11th floor. Antagonistic, defensive, unresponsive... all describe the city's performance. No surprise that they're not staying for a third. They've done very little to reassure the public that the scam-eras are function properly, that they save lives, or that they're NOT ABOUT THE MONEY.

----- Update 5:20 pm -----
Need we say more. Jim Villanucci was offended by the "heavy-hitters" from the city Kevin Broderick, John Castillo, Joe Bowdich, Ron Hetes, and John Walsh. He's gone so far as to call them liars. What's more important, callers weren't fooled by their performance either. Note to the 11th floor... leave spinning to the professionals and thanks for sending them out!

----- Update 6:00 pm -----
An interesting factoid has come out of today's Villanucci show... the time for a yellow light across the city seems to be close to or right about 3 seconds. Host Jim Villanucci timed the lights today himself, finding the lights up and down Montgomery were set to 3 seconds for a yellow light on through traffic. Anecdotal evidence from callers seems to support Mr. Villanucci's timing.

Now people are becoming suspicious that the city will alter the timing long enough to prove that they're 4 seconds (as maintained by traffic engineer Kevin Broderick) to the media and then switch them back. Who knows what they'll try... after all today's attempt to spin sure hasn't worked for them.

Front Page News

The plate-cover crackdown that we've been telling you about made front page news this afternoon.
According to the Albuquerque Tribune, APD has written over 500 citations in the last few months to motorists that choose to protect their license plate and their rear-end with plate-covers. The story asks the question, "are they really illegal?"

Our research indicates that there is no direct language that outlaws plate covers. (Read our take here and here.) The Tribune article featuring your friendly neighborhood Eye, asks the question but Assistant City Attorney Greg Wheeler told the Trib, "It hasn't been tested. The law was clearly meant to apply to the human eye, but I think that it could evolve to include a camera."

Evolve?! What Mr. Wheeler apparently means, is that the city hopes that a judge will rule that a plate that restricts a license plates viewing angle to the height of a human is an obstruction. Or perhaps he hopes that the council will move to create an ordinance that protects the scam-era revenue.

Either way cracking down on license plate covers is clearly designed to protect revenue, not lives.

----- Eye Alert -----
If you're near a radio or reading this blog Monday afternoon tune into 770 KKOB. Jim Villanucci is ripping the scam-era system with data from a county source that indicates that accidents at photo enforced intersections have steadily increased since the system's installation. You can listen live at http://www.770kob.com/KKOB_OnlineRadioStream.html.