Letters to Editor

Dear Editor,

I am writing in my role as Chair of the Board of Directors of Hidalgo Medical Services.

We have read with interest the ongoing series by Frost McGahey, including the June 3, 2025 article with the headline "Insurance Company Alleges Fraud." It is unclear why Ms. McGahey has never contacted HMS before publishing. It is also unclear why an eight-year-old news story is now being revisited, and represented to the public as if it were based on recent events.

Sheriff Raul Villanueva,

I'm not laughing. Apparently three out of four Sheriffs deputies laughed and one of those four pulled his taser on a fellow officer to force him to turn over a compromised rabbit. This is sadistic behavior and has NO PLACE in law enforcement. It has long been postulated that abusing animals is accompanied by anti-social or sociopathic behavior. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4552201/ 

And some say Silver City does not need a Citizens Advisory Group. Maybe the county needs one.

We will be watching closely how this event is adjudicated and if the responsible parties are appropriately disciplined or, if necessary, fired. No officer pulls a taser on a fellow officer if nothing dangerous is afoot.

Dennis Nendza
Silver City Resident

Dear Editor...After 250 years of world-shattering success, could it be that the nation's Rule of Law --- managed and executed by our 'Third Estate' --- is now breaking bad!!!

Only 3 weeks ago a horrendous gang shootout and murder of three teenagers shattered Las Cruces; and presently, a Las Cruces judge...no, not an innocent Cruceño homeowner but a Magistrate who presides over the New Mexico Judicial System...was just found harboring a tren de aragua vicious migrant gang-member in his own home!!!

Ken Burns, to celebrate the nation's semiquincentennial, will soon air a new PBS special, and we will be celebrating that the Founders carefully crafted certain guarantees to foster a prosperous civil society, including (a) personal property rights, (b) trial by juries of peers, and (c) IMPARTIALITY by the justice system...pictified in courthouses across the nation as a blindfolded mature woman administering justice fairly and equally. Today, 250 years into our American journey, Judges now act partially, politically, capriciously, imperiously, impulsively, impetuously.

Editor-

I read New Mexico House Bill 518, relating to the LGBTQ+ community and discovered it said virtually the same thing over and over within its two-sentence statement. — Grant County Beat, Mar. 14, 2025.

Although, I'll have to admit I've never heard the word "Expansive" included in the multiple sequence of nouns and symbols common to the phrase.

Maybe, "Expansive" is New Mexico's contribution to the term's official state designation.

It’s a “No” on Senate Bill 5

By Tom Shelley

I have worked closely on wildlife management and conservation issues in New Mexico for more than three decades. The subject matters greatly to anyone who hunts or fishes or lives or works near our wildlife or simply enjoys our wildlife species.

Senate Bill 5 could reach the House of Representatives for a vote early this week. We need to stop it. The bill would send the Game Commission down the same, overreaching path that the US Fish and Wildlife Service has been on over the past century. 

Dear Editor...Good intentions don't always make Good policy.

In fact, sometimes good intentions make very bad policy! The proposed police advisory or review board recently proposed by our Silver City Town Council is one such toxic proposal that is very bad policy.

At last week's work session, I listened to very well-meaning supporters and framers of this proposal. Across the nation though, these advisory boards and so-called support systems of professionals...such as social workers, sociologists, psychologists...worsen relations and widen the axis at the conjunction of cops and community. Faith and Trust are foundational to effective policing and safe neighborhoods. Faith and Trust break down when distortions and misinformation are blasted across Facebook, Instagram and neighborhood chat rooms, as well as from reports in local papers and on local radio. More stress and less understanding result.

Dear Editor,

Currently, the State of New Mexico is poised to spend $100 million on Behavioral Health reforms in the 2025 legislative session. Future Focused Education, a New Mexico nonprofi t committed to education reform, applauds and supports the State's effort. Yet, we are concerned and must call attention to the absence of young people and public school voices in the bill.

According to the National Council of Mental Health Well-Being, "One in fi ve teens lives with a mental health condition. Half of all mental illnesses begin by age 14 and 75 percent begin by the mid-20's. That means more teens than we think in the United States are struggling with a mental health challenge right now and many don't know what to do."

Dear Editor...Well, here they go again!!!...

 Our town councilors, that is, The Silver City Town Council, proposes to impose a Police Review Board.  Haven't our town mothers and fathers done enough damage already (a) with crime and burglaries way up from previous years and (b) with every byway and highway and every major intersection polluted with Cannabis Parkours.  U know, local restaurateurs find it almost impossible to offer their sit-down customers a Margarita or two with their delicious tacos and gorditos, but a license to sell dope to our local teens on Silver Heights Boulevard...no problem.

And now, they seek to enflame relations between locals and cops.  Who's dumb; Who's dumber...Stan Snider who proposes to introduce it; or Nick Prince, the brains behind the concept?  It's not just that these police review boards around the country don't work to improve police-community relationships...they, in fact, worsen and further embitter police-community relationships.