The Night Shift: Why Did Three of Four Officers Resign This Week?
New Work Schedule Splits Council, Police.
Tuesday night’s Village of Cloudcroft Council meeting briefly acknowledged the sudden resignations of several village employees: three of four police officers and one village clerk. What’s going on?
It’s official—Chief of Police Mike Testa resigned. Swiftly following his resignation, Deputy Chief David Sanchez and Officer Calib Bruce announced their departures, effectively immediately.
Also leaving the Village administration is Village Clerk Shaela Hemphill, whose resignation was a complete surprise, especially after receiving kudos for managing her first budgeting session. She gave her official notice at “4:30 this afternoon,” Mayor Turner told the council.
Vyanca Vega was sworn in as the acting village clerk for the next 21 days.
While the mayor addressed the changes, surprisingly little was said about the sudden resignations throughout the two-hour and fifteen-minute village council meeting.
Currently, Cloudcroft has one remaining member of the four-person police force, Officer Chris Swanson.
After the village meeting, Mayor Craig Turner said, “I asked him to build me a schedule for the next 30 days covering the village in the best way he can as an individual at our busiest times. To include, of course, Memorial Day and stuff like that.”
About stop-gap coverage, Turner says: “I'm working with Otero County Sheriff's Department and the one officer that we do have. My goal is to have our chief, at the very least, hired within the next two weeks. So my hopes are that I can have ample coverage between the chief of police and Officer Swanson on the job, coupled with Otero County and state police—don't forget state police—and that I can have ample coverage. Is it ideal? No. Ideal would be having our police department stable.”
“Sheriff David Black will see that we're accommodated until we have time to work through it,” says Trustee Maynard.
An Otero County Sheriff employee confirmed that the department would have “a day shift every day of the year— it doesn’t matter if it’s a holiday, weekend, or whatever.”
Trustee Tabitha Foster says, “Mayor Turner has already been in contact with Sheriff Black, and they will be helping control up here until we get those positions covered.”
The resignations don’t come as a complete surprise. A storm has been brewing in village affairs since the new mayor's election and two new trustees' addition.
The first hint of discontent was the sudden appearance of an anonymous letter attacking the mayor and council over the perceived underpayment of the newly appointed police chief, Mike Testa, and, more importantly, the council’s proposal to adopt a Panama schedule—12 hour day and night shifts where officers are on patrol.
The second storm warning was Testa, Sanchez, and Bruce's conspicuous absence from the May 3rd ribbon-cutting ceremony at Cloudcroft’s new police headquarters.
Testa says during the April annual budget meeting, “I didn’t sign up for this.”
How did we get here?
Testa tells the Cloudcroft Reader, “We’ll, it’s complicated. In short, it’s the council I’m having all my problems with. In one meeting, where I brought people with me in support, they said, ‘We’ll look at it at budget.’ Later, at budget, they said, ‘We’re putting everyone on a 12-hour schedule. They didn’t even talk to me about it at all.”
He continues, “The mayor told me we want 24/7 coverage.’ I said, ‘Okay. We have that now…just the guys stay at the fire station and wake up if something happens, but they're there.’ One of the council members mentioned she wanted full patrol all night and day. And I said, ‘Well, with four guys?’ You need more people to do that. They said, ‘Well, we'll go to the state and get a change,’ and they did. So, basically, I was feeling like I’m not really the chief; I'm just here.”
Mayor Turner addressed the turnovers in an interview with the Cloudcroft Reader Wednesday afternoon, the day after the formal resignations. He says, “I can’t speak for them. But it boils down to: they didn’t want to work the night schedule. They felt like there was not enough activity up here at night. And I tried to stress to them in that meeting, ‘Guys, I’m not doing this because of the past. I’m doing this because of what could happen in the future.’ So that’s it in a nutshell.”
“The town needs 24-hour coverage,” says Trustee Gail McCoy. “We don't need officers sleeping while they're supposed to be working and us paying for it.”
Trustee Foster says, “Our commitment to the Village was to provide as true of 24/7 coverage as we could. All the officers were told that at the beginning of our tenure in January. So, in my honest opinion, they were given five months to rectify it themselves.”
“I believe what led to the resignations was the workshop planned for this Friday to go over the police scheduling,” Foster adds.
Testa tells the Cloudcroft Reader he met with the Mayor and Trustee James Maynard before the budget meeting. “The mayor told me that Mr. Maynard wanted to have a meeting about my salary. So I met him, just the three of us, and he said, ‘Well, how much do you make now?’ It's $72,000 a year. And he said, ‘Oh, that's plenty of money for you up here in Cloudcroft. You don't need any more money. You're not being shot at.’ I'm like…you gotta be kidding.”
Testa says he is now working as a logger with Ellinger Logging. He says, “I would have never left had that not all developed. I was there for the people. It wasn’t just a job.”
In our interview, Mayor Turner praised Chief Testa. “Mike has been very, very professional about all this. There have been a lot of rumors going around, and I hate rumors, but he’s been very professional about this.”
About his resignation, Officer Bruce says, ”I think you know the mayor's been trying to change our schedule and work a schedule that we've all worked before and there's no issue with the schedule per se …it just it wouldn't work with the current amount of people that we have. He wanted to change it to a Panama schedule, which is what Alamogordo PD and the sheriff’s office work. Most police departments work that. The problem is that you need a minimum of six people to work that shift, and he did not want to do that because he did not want to increase the budget for the police department. Sheriff David Black, the Undersheriff Sean Jett, and all of Cloudcroft police department all explained it to him. I told him that it wouldn’t work, and he refused to listen and said he would do it regardless of what we thought. Even if we only had two people, he would still do that schedule, which is impossible.”
Bruce continues, “So basically, you have one person working 12 hours during the day and one working a 12-hour shift at night. There are some council members and I’m sure some people in the village don't like the idea of having to pay us to sleep. That was the big issue.” He says, “I took the job because I love working in law enforcement. The schedule in Cloudcroft worked well for me—it allowed me to be with my family and work in law enforcement. What we were doing was the absolute best schedule.”
Does Cloudcroft need a nighttime patrol?
Testa says, “I told them I understand you want full coverage 24/7 all the time. (But) we don't have the crime at night, only every now and then. We had somebody steal some gas one night not long ago. But we felt it didn't justify having somebody full patrol. Just being on call is what it's been for the last 20 years. To me, I would go crazy driving around Cloudcroft all night.”
All three resigning officers previously worked for the Otero County Sheriff’s Office, which adheres to a Panama schedule.
“The decision to use a Panama schedule was not just done off the cuff,” says Trustee McCoy. “The mayor did a lot of research on this and talked to many people before we ever decided on this.”
“I asked Mike Testa and the other officers,” says Turner. “ ‘If you can provide me another alternative, I'd listen.’ I would still do that. It's just, again, all the research that I've done, and I have thoroughly done research. It's just the most efficient and best schedule for officers to work. And so I can't see that I could find anything that would be better.”
Testa says Turner did give the department a chance. “He (Turner) said well, ‘I'll give you guys to the end of May to come up something better June 1st,’” says Testa, “and we all thought and looked at everything and, you know, tried to come up with something. And I'm like, I think I'm just gonna leave; that's my answer. So I decided just to leave. It took the other guys a little bit longer.”
Fortunately, Cloudcroft doesn’t depend solely on the local police force.
“In New Mexico, we have three layers of law enforcement that the taxpayers already paid for. That's your local, your county, and then your state. So, these guys are up here all the time anyway,” explains Trustee Maynard. “The county's always the first one to respond. Because we don't have or did not have law enforcement that really lived or stayed in the village, and that was part of the issue. You know, this isn't the coverage that we're telling the public. We told them you have 24-hour coverage when we sometimes had coverage. I think that had been in place for a long time.”
Maynard continues, “[It’s important] for the community to understand, okay, ‘here's where we were. Here's the proposed change with a 12-hour shift.’ In other words, you work 12 hours and get paid for it. Then you go home and sleep, do whatever you must for 12 hours. And then you come back, more like the rest of the world. That they didn't stay around to try and make it work, I was disappointed in because that would have been what we would expect of other employees if we had scheduling changes…It's like this wasn't necessary, but this is what they did. So that's all, they have the right to do that. I would have expected them to either visit on it more or say, let's try it for, you know, a couple months, see what happens.”
When asked what his plan is for replacements, Mayor Turner says, “So, the short answer is I think we will find officers who want to do that. It's been shared with me when I did my research, speaking with Sheriff Black, the undersheriff, Sean, and Tim Johnson. He was a captain with the state police for years. Now, he works for the Municipal League. In theory, it shouldn't be hard to find people to do that because anybody I look at is already doing that schedule. So—in theory—but I will give you a timeline. I think it's probably best to hire a chief of police. Once he’s hired, they are hired, so bring them in because they'll be part of that. They'll be part of this task force. So they'll be helping, of course, in the interviewing process as well. And they'll have a great deal to say about that. Once we have the chief position filled, it will probably take at least another 60 days to have the positions filled.“
Trustee Foster says “I think we're going to be picky about it, you know, we're going to make sure that we that we're very thorough with our expectations for each of these officers, and to make sure that they're willing to accept those expectations and so it's clearly laid out before them of what's expected of them.”
“The same thing happened with Tularosa,” says Foster. “A new mayor and new council came in this year; they were kind of in the same situation that we were in. So Tularosa cleaned house. They do have a chief of police now; it has taken a little bit longer for them to fill those positions as well, but they're, they're going the same route that we are.”
The other surprise resignation came from Village Clerk Shaela Hemphill. She says, “My decision to step away was ultimately based on a few things.” After citing personal and health-related matters, she said, “A big factor being the lack of support and respect for employees across all departments...A lot of the office staff's work is not directly visible to the people and even sometimes the council.”
It is just unfortunate that it has come to this with so many people stepping away,” she says. “Due to various reasons, there have been six resignations in the last month, and that truly breaks my heart. I firmly believe that if given the proper resources and support, the Village of Cloudcroft team will exceed any and all expectations 1,000%.”
In light of Hemphill’s sudden resignation, Turner is realistic about the task ahead. ‘“As I said last night—it will get darker before it gets lighter. And you can quote me on that. I mean, the village in the past has not done a super job of cross-training. Therefore, I was up late last night till 3:30 in the morning thinking of all the jobs that must be done just to maintain order. For example, payroll. No one in the village now understands how to do payroll since Shae resigned effective immediately. Therefore, I was thinking last night, I’ve got to get these guys paid next Friday, and I don't have a clue how to do it. So those things are keeping me up right now. We'll get to it.“
Turner adds, “I feel like what I'm doing is the right thing. Is it going to be painful for a while? Yes, it will. And will there be some unhappy residents of the village with me? I am not naive about that, but my heart of heart is that I believe that the village's safety is my number one responsibility. And I believe what I'm doing is right.”
You can read the Cloudcroft Reader coverage of the April budget retreat here and our recent interview with Mayor Turner here.
Don’t get lost in rumors. Read the Cloudcroft Reader for the real stories about what’s happening in Cloudcroft.
2 weeks for a replacement? Seems like a complete lack of understanding of the labor and housing market in small mountain towns. Politicians treating long time community members as if they're expendable. Anyone that actually works in the village can not afford to live there. Likely, they'll be attempting to hire mercenaries with no connection to the area with questionable past records, ultimately costing the taxpayer more than "police sleeping".
So does Mr. Maynard "you work 12 hours and get paid for it. Then you go home and sleep, do whatever you must for 12 hours." Work 12 hour days? How about the rest of these politicians? They've done their best to make Cloudcroft a less safe place refusing to compromise with the department. The Cheif Testa has over 30 years in the community. Remember to vote.