NM AG's office stonewalling records request on ranch raid

After six years of trying to obtain documents from the very agency that is supposed to make sure New Mexico’s public-records law is enforced, Marcy Britton finally gets her day in court this week. Britton in 2009 submitted a straightforward request for all emails pertaining to then-Attorney General Gary King and his Animal Cruelty Task Force. King’s group raided Hispanic ranches at both ends of the state, claiming it had smashed cockfighting rings. His task force offered sensational accounts of roosters high on illegal steroids to prod police to obtain search warrants. Then it teamed with law enforcement officers to raid poultry ranches. Britton, though, said King and his cohorts actually intimidated ranchers, violated their constitutional rights and broke laws. The task force killed about 4,000 roosters, hens and chicks, and it destroyed countless eggs, all on supposition that the birds had been turned into steroid-enhanced combatants. The birds were not tested for drugs. King’s raiders simply poisoned them. In one raid, a police helicopter and some 30 law enforcement officers stormed a ranch in San Juan County. This show of force might have been fitting for a cartel boss, but the target was two ranchers who owned 700 chickens. Had this army of officers found a cockfight in progress, which it did not, the ranchers would have faced a petty misdemeanor charge. King’s office had thousands of pertinent emails about the raids.  Nonetheless, it stonewalled Britton for years, providing only about 230 emails to her. The ones she received were innocuous, redundant or so heavily redacted as to render them useless. Britton, 65, sued the Attorney General’s Office in 2012. She said the attorney general, sworn to follow the public records law, instead broke it to prevent her from shining light on his operations...more