News & Commentary

An Interview with ACLU-NM Police Accountability Strategist Elaine Maestas

How sloppy police work put an innocent young woman behind bars.

Our most ambitious legislative session yet.

The New Mexico Civil Rights Act is so-named because it promises to do for the state of New Mexico exactly what the federal Civil Rights Act of 1871 did for our nation. It provides a legal mechanism for people to go to court and demand redress for violations of their rights under the Bill of Rights.

Qualified immunity and the quest to rebalance the scales of justice.

During the recent special legislative session, the ACLU and its allies achieved something that six months ago seemed like an absolute long-shot: passing a law that requires every law enforcement agency in the state to adopt body-worn cameras. While the law does give us a new tool to strengthen police accountability in the state, it is by no means a cure-all for police excessive use of force. If we’re ever going to put an end to police violence, we will need to use every tool at our disposal to reform police culture and reduce the potential harm of police-citizen interactions.

Police brutality is not new, nor is systemic racism in policing. Police forces in the United States were used to catch runaway slaves and later to enact a campaign of terror against Black people during the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras. Police were employed to brutally suppress striking factory and farm workers in the 20th century. Police were used to violently disperse protesters during the Civil Rights and Anti-War movements. Police are the front line soldiers in the ongoing “War on Drugs” that has led to the over policing of communities of color, mass incarceration, and the highest rate of officer-involved shootings in the developed world.

Operation Legend is just another pixel in the increasingly clear image of a criminal legal system that is irreparably broken and fundamentally unable to fulfill its basic function: keeping us safe.

Our client, D’Andre, should have been able to stand on his own street corner and exercise his constitutional right to film police from a safe distance without retaliation. Instead, he wound up handcuffed and detained for four days.