"Thug Life" Wanna Be

Lately it seems Albuquerque City Council meetings are more dangerous for citizens than 4th/Central at 2am on Friday night. And it's not that city personnel are in danger from upset citizens, it's that citizens are in danger from high ranking city officials.

You see this past Monday, a citizen who regularly attends and participates in our system of open government was accosted and victimized by two of RJ Berry's top lawyers. While another citizen was speaking during the public comment portion of the meeting, Mr. Charles Arasim was documenting various high ranking city officials including CAO Robert Perry, City Attorney David Tourek, and interim self described minority chief Allen Banks.

While Mr. Arasim was videoing these people, Mr. Perry appeared to be dozing off. And as the sequence of stills below show, realizing that he might be caught on camera Mr. Perry decided he'd act upon what his inner thoughts were saying to himself.

"You lookin at me?" "Well I'm lookin at you pal!"

Mr. Perry got up out of his seat in the back row of the chambers where he was sitting by himself and then ambled on over to where Mr. Arasim was. Mr. Perry then glared at Mr. Arasim, interfered with his camera and then decided he'd stand in front of Arasim's camera to keep him from documenting Banks and Tourek.

"You wanna take a picture of me? Well here I am beotch!"

As Perry heard his name dropped by the speaker he just couldn't help but grin in satisfaction to his little effort of standing up to a citizen. Then as if things weren't weird enough, they got bizarre. And dangerous. You see, little did Mr. Arasim know that he just walked into The Twilight Zone.

As Mr. Arasim and some friends left the city council chambers and walked to their cars, who did they encounter in the underground parking garage? None other than Rob Perry and his sidekick Greg Wheeler. Our Eyes tell us that Wheeler called out to Mr. Arasim and called him a "chickenshit motherfucker" causing numerous other citizens to stop and look in dismay including Mr. Arasim. Wheeler then closed in on Mr. Arasim while yelling at him and raised his arm as if to punch him. Perry stepped in and pulled Wheeler back.

"Aint nobody gonna dis my homie!"

Folks, we're not talking about a group of private citizens in a dispute. We're not talking about drunk college kids stumbling out of Maloney's. We are talking about a top city lawyer and the top administrative officer of the largest city in New Mexico. A city whose very own police department is under intense scrutiny by the US Department of Justice

We have to ask the obvious questions, if this is how Perry and Wheeler respond in public to minor scrutiny, how do they behave behind closed doors? How do they behave under intense scrutiny? Is this the behavior we expect city leaders to model? And did Wheeler violate any criminal laws? We think he did. It seems to us he committed assault and disorderly conduct. Imagine how the city would respond to this if an APD officer did this while on duty? Because let's face it, Wheeler and Perry were not at the meeting as citizens, they were there on duty and as representatives of Berry's administration. Perhaps their boss, David Tourek bares some responsibility with this mess as well.....

Here's the story as broadcast on KRQE-13 last night:
http://www.krqe.com/news/local/top-abq-officials-accused-of-petty-antics

And here's raw video from the incident:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT-HPkRnS0E&feature=c4-overview&list=UUloSjzKimMDOizYNTzRSS6A