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Thursday, March 20, 2008

Mountainair Reconfirms Police Chief

By Laura Nesbitt
Mountain View Telegraph
    In a unanimous decision on Tuesday the Mountainair's Town Council voted to reconfirm Police Chief Edward vonKutzleben at a council meeting attended by about 100 people.
    About 10 people walked out in protest after the vote.
    At-will employees of municipalities must be reconfirmed after a town's election at an organizational meeting. Mountainair has three at-will employees including the town clerk, the maintenance supervisor and the police chief, said Town Clerk Suzan Brazil.
    When it came time to reconfirm vonKutzleben at the previous Town Council meeting on March 11, councilors went into a two-hour executive session. When council reconvened after the closed door session a motion was made by Gayle Jones to reconfirm the police chief, but it was not seconded.
    "As soon as that happened, the other three officers brought me their badges" and about 25 objecting members of the public left the meeting, said Mayor Velta Gilley in an interview.
    The council then went back into executive session to avoid the complete loss of law enforcement for the town which has a chief, two patrolmen and a sergeant.
    "The result of that executive session was that we asked the three officers to remain officers until" the following town meeting on Tuesday night, Gilley said.
    VonKutzleben was appointed police chief in August 2007 replacing Ronald Fulfer who took a job with the Torrance County Sheriff's Department. Fulfer worked as Mountainair Police Chief for almost two years, Brazil said. Fulfer had replaced Virgil Doty. Last month Doty was hired as the new animal control officer for Estancia.
    VonKutzleben drove trucks for 20 years for United Parcel Service. He moved to Mountainair with his family almost four years ago from Georgia. Drug dealing and domestic violence problems he believed he saw in the town prompted him to get a job with law enforcement.
    "If you look at his record, the entire police department record, I think it's a very good record for a young police department. It's the very beginning of a very cohesive department in the town of Mountainair.
    "In my opinion people have grown very lax in our community and now they're being held accountable. People (are not accustomed to) answering for their actions," Gilley said.
    The meeting on Tuesday was held in the Joe J. Brazil Auditorium in the Assembly of God campground. The large space was almost filled with townspeople.
    Newly elected Councilor Larry Zamora made a motion to reconsider the confirmation of the police chief, and Councilor Frank Lucero, in his second term, seconded that motion. Councilors then went into an executive session that lasted about a half-hour.
    During that session vonKutzleben stood in a group with the officers who had resigned after learning he was not reconfirmed, Sgt. Guy Sullenger, Patrolman Wyatt Sullenger and Patrolman Alton Adams.
    VonKutzleben also walked around the room and spoke with some townspeople.
    "Remember I told you that you're too rough with these people. I told you they'd put you under a pine tree," Helen Chavez, whose family is from Mountainair and who moved back to town more than 20 years ago, told the chief.
    "That's why we dug up all the pine trees," vonKutzleben said to Chavez.
    Afterward Chavez said that she really "likes Ed," but people in the town feel like they're "on pins and needles," Chavez said.
    "This is a good old boy town and we'd like to keep it that way," Chavez said. She believes Mountainair needs a police department "that knows the people of the town."
    Part of the problem is that the chief does his job, Gilley said.
    "That's what's pushing this argument between the townspeople (and the town)" Gilley said.
    Gilley received about 80 letters after the March 11 meeting supporting the chief and "lots of calls and my phone at home didn't stop ringing."
    "We've got to have a police department in this town. This is the first time we've had a stable department in years and we have to keep it," Councilmember Gayle Jones said after the meeting about why she made the motion to reconfirm the chief.