Pluto Walks the Earth, Chapter 51
Police Beat
Read Pluto Walks the Earth, Chapter 50: Citizen Informant
Jaime
It is a basic rule of journalistic ethics that, before you do anything else in a conversation, you identify yourself as a reporter. It’s what I’m doing right here, right now. (Once again, Jaime Romero of the New Mexican.) And it’s what I did with Deputy Mendoza of the Rio Arriba County sheriff’s office.
I’m not a police reporter; I cover business, so I’m not all that well acquainted with law enforcement in the region — certainly not Rio Arriba, which adjoins Santa Fe County and shares some climate and topography but not much else. Mainly it’s just sprawling, scrubby, semi-rural, semi-suburban, nondescript blah — plus four desert ghost towns. If you know Rio Arriba, it’s probably for Northern New Mexico College, New Mexico Highlands University, the Jicarilla Apache Reservation, the Brazos Cliffs, the Monastery of Christ (with its own brewery!) and, most famously, the Puye Cliff Dwellings, which are more than 1,000 years old and were abandoned by Pueblo Indians 500 years ago. It’s like a two-story condo complex carved out of soft volcanic tuff. No community tennis court, no pool. In the Tewe language, Puye means “pueblo ruin where the rabbits assemble or meet.” Of course.