I cannot imagine the mental fortitude, the bravery, the patience and the sacrifice it takes to kiss your babies goodbye everyday, put on the uniform and go out into the often-savage world we live to be a police officer. But this pales in comparison to the selflessness that our law enforcement officers exude to protect us, all too often at their own peril.
Of course, the loss of a police officer at the hands of a criminal is painfully tragic, as we in Las Cruces well know. In that situation, the officer becomes a hero, his sacrifice etched in the annals of our admiration and appreciation for eternity. And for good reason.
But right now, one of our local heroes is facing a more nefarious fight, one in which the New Mexico Attorney General has taken up for purely politic reasons, to cement his own legacy in the halls of progressive narcissism. The officer, an Army veteran who served our country then and now, has been with LCPD since 2014. In 2022, he shot and killed a suspect who had stolen a beer from a local convenience store. But the plot thickens. The suspect gave false information when asked for his identity and brandished a knife in the vehicle before the two officers pulled him from the passenger’s seat. He then chose to fight the officers, slamming one into the pavement so hard that he was diagnosed with a concussion. He reached for the officer’s gun and then his taser. Per his training, the officer now on trial shot him.
In 2022, the local DA elected not to prosecute and the officer returned to work. But then last year, the New Mexico AG pursued charges and last month, Officer Brad Lunsford was convicted of Voluntary Manslaughter and immediately remanded to custody pending sentencing on April 4th. Of course, his treatment flies in the face of what we are used to in Las Cruces: suspects being deemed incompetent for violent, repeat offenses and immediately released. Or the 18-year-old last week that robbed a Walmart and then attempted to rob a gas station, with three juvenile accomplices, charged with nine felony counts and released the very next day. But I digress.
New details have emerged in Officer Lunsford’s trial. First, the suspect’s toxicology was excluded from trial, including that he was high on Methamphetamines and Amphetamines. Second, that Officer Lunsford’s training taught him to respond to a suspect in exactly the manner he did was also excluded. Third, two jurors, that the defense had vetted and approved, were removed and replaced just before the trial began. Recall, our constitution requires a fair trial, including an impartial jury. This notion has been obliterated by the final, latest finding, that Juror #8 failed to disclose that they are a member of an anti-police group, had commented on and re-shared anti-police propaganda on social media, and had even participated in anti-police protests and podcasts. This person eventually even became the jury foreperson, driving deliberations that would eventually lead to Officer Lunsford’s conviction.
The clear issues highlighted above have denigrated any future discussions regarding officer-involved shootings. Bad ones inevitably occur. But this isn’t one of them and it brings into question whether inherent bias exists in the prosecutor of every other case going forward.
And if you wish to debate the decision that a dedicated officer made in a split second when his and his fellow officer’s lives were threatened, fine, but the bottom line is that this state has weaponized the justice system to target this officer, to keep critical evidence and context out of the trial. And this has huge implications – our officers now feel that the state that they serve does not support them, or that their lives, their freedoms, their rights are somehow worth less than the criminals they give up their lives (figuratively and literally) to keep us all safe from.
Officer Lunsford’s next hearing is on March 21st at 10:30 a.m. in District Court. Here, the judge will determine whether there are grounds for a retrial and/or whether the officer can spend two weeks with his wife and two young sons prior to his sentencing, where he faces 10 years in prison.
