The shooting at Young Park shows the brokenness of our community on multiple levels. For thousands of years, the most basic tenets of society have been “do not harm others or encroach on their property.” Here in Las Cruces and across New Mexico, we are seeing what happens when we do not uphold these rules.
Parents should be teaching kids from a young age that they cannot hit others, take other kids’ toys, or damage another’s belongings. In school, these rules should be reinforced so that they are engrained by the time the kids reach adulthood. There must be consistent and sure enforcement of these rules, no matter whether people are young or old, rich or poor, Hispanic or white, housed or homeless. These are literally the overarching rules that allow society to survive.
There have always been some parents who don’t raise their kids well, but now our schools are perpetuating the same cycle. I advocate for hundreds of teachers and parents across the state, and they have shared that kids in schools are allowed to harm others and property with no real consequences. Kids throw chairs in classrooms, hit other kids, destroy bathroom facilities, and the teachers aren’t allowed to really stop it.
For example, a Las Cruces mother related that in her daughter’s class, one of the kids has intense temper tantrums. Instead of imposing consequences to help this child learn proper behavior, the teacher takes the rest of the kids out of the class and allows the child to trash the classroom.
An elementary teacher in Farmington shared a similar situation, with a little girl who is violent, repeatedly hitting the other kids. The teacher is not allowed to impose any real discipline nor move this girl to another class where she could receive more individualized attention. The other kids in class cringe in fear whenever the girl walks by, knowing she is likely to hit them.
A Las Cruces teacher told me the district has taken away any real tools for imposing discipline. The students are essentially allowed to do anything, with no consequences. Behavior issues are a prime reason that many teachers have left the schools, and this teacher would not want her own children to attend public school here.
Year after year, all these kids are learning that no one will stop a kid who chooses to hurt others, steal, or destroy. By the time these kids are teens, they have escalated to fighting, doing drugs, shoplifting, stealing cars and guns, and shooting others. With New Mexico’s lax juvenile crime laws and catch-and-release policies, these kids are ripe for getting involved with organized criminal gangs and cartels, who know that youths can break the law with very little consequence. We now have many kids growing up with no respect for the most basic laws of society. And thus, we have high rates of juvenile crime with tragic consequences, like what happened at Young Park.
It's not compassionate to allow kids to continue their violent, destructive behaviors. In the long run, this is harming kids as well as our community. Teachers and principals need to be allowed to impose swift, sure discipline for students who refuse to respect the rules. They need support from the Superintendent and School Board in changing the culture.
City Council can ensure we have good laws, that the laws are applied equally to everyone, that we have enough police officers to keep our community safe, and that there are sure consequences for those who break the law. Our state legislature refused to tighten up our juvenile crime laws, but City Council can follow the lead of Anthony and Alamogordo by implementing a curfew for teens that holds both teens and parents accountable. City Council can also greatly increase the salaries for our police officers in the upcoming union negotiations, so that Chief Jeremy Story will be able to better attract and retain officers.
If the City Council and School Board both decide they will no longer tolerate people harming others and their property, they can make a big difference for our community.
Sarah Smith is co-leader of the New Mexico Freedoms Alliance (non-partisan statewide grassroots coalition) and Vice Chair of the Coalition of Conservatives in Action in Las Cruces. As a mother of two teens, Sarah leads a homeschool group for dozens of local families. She is a natural healthcare practitioner and former NASA aerospace engineer.
