Our Town
The killing of Victor Perez is just the latest in a long line of debacles in Pocatello.
This is the third installment of a three-part series about the killing of Victor Perez. Here are Part I and Part II.
Welcome to Pocatello, Idaho, my town. I’ve lived here for over three decades—longer than anyplace else in my life. But, truth be told, we have issues. Pocatello should be, based on location, potential quality of life, and physical beauty, the urban equivalent of a shiny luxury SUV, slammed and cambered, bassin down a superhighway toward a promising golden horizon. We are, instead, a Yugo with a slipping clutch and a transmission that, when engaged, only works in reverse. From the death of Victor Perez at the hands of the police to firing a school employee on Christmas Eve for providing a needy student a meal to putting local businesses out of business to shady land deals, high-profile public dysfunction R us.
It hasn’t always been this way. When I first came to Pocatello for a faculty position at Idaho State University back in the early 1990s, the city was thriving. I found a wonderful place to settle down just outside of city limits on an old homestead perched on a mountainside overlooking Pocatello. A quirk of geography and zoning placed my property within Pocatello’s impact zone, allowing me to chair Pocatello’s Planning and Zoning Commission for a few years in the late 1990s. At that time, my observation from an insider’s perspective was that the city was ascendant and being run by a diverse group of people united by competence, a passion for improving our community, and an understanding of the service part of public service.
But that was then; this is now. It’s been nearly all downhill since those early halcyon days. I don’t know if I’m going to live long enough to see things turn around.
There are several reasons for our decline. Pocatello is at an unusual nexus of geography, religion, education, and culture. Our institutions operate under complex tensions between various local factions that have grown worse over the years. Often, a lowest common denominator defines our ceiling due to entrenched tribalism. Good leaders who can bridge the divides are scarce in this area.
Idaho State University, the area’s largest employer, has been poorly run for decades. Despite its position of prominence, leadership doesn’t exactly shine like a beacon from its ivory tower. ISU is, unfortunately, where lofty ambitions generally associated with higher education go to die. It’s a large part of, rather than a solution to, our leadership issues.
ISU is everything that bad dreams are capable of conjuring about cloistering in an academic bubble. During my time at ISU, the general attitude was that we were an oasis of enlightenment in a wasteland that extended hundreds of miles in every direction from the edge of campus. The disconnect between the arrogance of a good part of the ISU community and their performance in advancing the institution for the public good was an endless source of wonder. Rarely have so many accomplished so little with such a surfeit of presumption completely intact. As a result, there’s just never been a lot of interplay between the campus community and everyone else. ISU does not play well with others.
This dynamic makes Pocatello unique as a university community. Most college towns have a buffer zone around the campus filled with coffee shops, small restaurants, bookstores, and other places that facilitate interactions between students, faculty, administrators, and the general public. But in Pocatello, where the ISU campus ends, residential neighborhoods begin right away. Unless you are within half a block of ISU, you’d never know that a college campus was just down the street.
In terms of a productive cultural impact, ISU is all but invisible. That’s unfortunate, yet it appears to be fine with all parties involved. ISU is loath to support local businesses, and, for reasons I can understand, I don’t detect an overabundance of warm feelings in the other direction either. It reminds me, in no small manner, of the situation at Oberlin College. Except for the jobs, ISU could cease to exist tomorrow, and most folks around here would barely notice. That is a glaring missed opportunity.
Pocatello School District 25, another mass in the dysfunctional center of gravity in these parts, has worked tirelessly to occupy whatever level is below godawful. D-25 is widely reviled for things like using COVID as a cover to implement changes without adequate public input and for firing a lunch lady a few days before Christmas because she provided a free meal to a needy kid. With D-25, the tail wags the dog. The flight to charter and private schools is full-on.
Then, in a hat trick, there is our ineffective, generally incompetent, and often self-serving Pocatello city government. Whether you're a business owner, a resident, or merely an innocent bystander, being in Pocatello means you are not secure in the knowledge that the best and brightest have your back.
Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me
I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed
She was looking kind of dumb with her finger and her thumb
In the shape of an "L" on her forehead - Smash Mouth
In the past 25 years, under various incarnations of city government, Pocatello has become known for an endless series of debacles: loaning taxpayer-funded equipment and services to other communities without compensation, ignoring merchants when not actively trying to run them out of business with botched infrastructure projects, cheating landowners in dubious real estate transactions, and disregarding treaty obligations with the Shoshone Bannock Tribe in promoting a sketchy airport development in another county, on tribal land.
About the only things that we are currently adept at attracting to our fair valley are illegal drugs, untreated mental illness, and a homeless population. These are not independent variables.
Just when we didn’t think it could get much worse, earlier this month, Victor Perez, an autistic, non-verbal teen with cerebral palsy, was shot nine times by Pocatello police responding to a public disturbance call originating from outside of the victim’s home. Videos of this encounter are disturbing. Victor spent the last days of his life in a local hospital on life support after multiple surgeries, including a leg amputation, were attempted to save his life. He succumbed to his wounds just a few days ago.
As controversial as the shooting was all by itself, in its wake, Pocatello city officials managed to make things much worse. Being able to further degrade such a situation almost ranks as a talent. Press conferences pertaining to the shooting have been late, inexplicably tone-deaf, and woefully inadequate. The city responded with snipers on nearby rooftops to a peaceful protest at city hall, where citizens gathered to demand answers from public officials who were remaining silent. There have been, until just the past few days, no apologies or acknowledgement of the severity of this tragedy from Pocatello officials. The optics are simply terrible. It's difficult to imagine how we ended up with this level of incompetence in civic leadership, particularly in PR 101-level tasks.
Somebody better get down there and tell those poor schmucks that Godzilla's coming. - Miami Vice
A few days ago I attended a public meeting held by a civil rights lawyer in town from the West Coast who came here to initiate a civil rights lawsuit against the City of Pocatello on behalf of the Perez family. The meeting went just about the way that I thought that it would, with a lot of talk about “privilege,” testimonials riddled with undeserved guilt, and a carefully worded but clearly purposeful discussion of lawsuits as an effective tool for achieving racial justice. Yeah, we’d do this for free to further the cause!
On whether or not this particular development is a good thing or not, I am agnostic. Though I, at this time, have no reason to think ill of this initiative, I’m not a fan of anyone who turns out to be a race hustler. In my experience, the entire racial justice industry, from Al Sharpton all the way to BLM, is generally less about achieving racial justice (whatever that happens to entail) than it is about earning large settlements to fatten various coffers. When this is the case, the enemy of my enemy is not my friend.
Racism, in my opinion, played no role in the events that led to the death of Victor Perez. This terrible tragedy is way more complicated than that—and, at least in my view, infinitely more devastating. It starts with incompetence and goes downhill from there. We’ll get to that presently. But racism? I think not. Nonetheless, the attorney came with an unmistakable devil-went-down-to-Georgia swagger. I anticipate that he and his firm will absolutely wear out Mayor Blad, Chief Schei, and others. It’s going to suck to be any of them.
None of this will bring Victor back, but it just might wake some people around here up to the consequences of selecting a mayor on Sunday in church instead of based on their merits as leaders the other six days of the week. Be that as it may, our tragedy has now evolved into a circus.
- That's old news...stick with me like always; we'll be okay. These things have a half-life of fifteen minutes.
- No, that's fame. Fame has a fifteen-minute half-life. Infamy lasts a little longer. - The Insider
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Marlise Irby-Facer, Public Information Officer, at mirby@pocatello.gov
Officer-Involved Shooting, Video of Incident, 911 Call to Dispatch, and Additional Information Released
During a press conference on April 17, Pocatello Mayor Brian Blad addressed the community following the officer-involved shooting that occurred April 5. The City understands the importance of releasing additional information to the community.
There are still many questions the City cannot answer because of the Eastern Idaho Critical Incident Task Force and pending litigation.
Once the external investigations are complete, the Idaho Attorney General’s Office will conduct the review of the investigative findings.
April 17 – PRESS CONFERENCE: Mayor Brian Blad, Additional Information Released to Public Following Officer-Involved Shooting
VIDEO: Officer-Involved Shooting April 5, 2025
Security Camera Footage from Nearby Building
911 Call to Dispatch
Dispatch Audio to Responding Officers
April 12 – PRESS RELEASE: City Addresses Need for Law Enforcement During Protest at City Hall
April 11 – PRESS RELEASE: Statement Following Officer-Involved Shooting
April 10 – VIDEO: Mayor of Pocatello’s Statement on the Officer-Involved Shooting Saturday, April 5, 2025
April 7 – PRESS CONFERENCE: Pocatello Police Chief Roger Schei Updates Community After Officer-Involved Shooting April 5
It’s completely clear to me that Pocatello city officials had no clue as to how to manage the Victor Perez crisis. It took several days for Chief of Police Schei to hold a press conference about the shooting and almost a week for Mayor Blad to come forward with a completely inadequate statement addressing the city’s response. City officials seemed convinced that they could just hunker down, spread a few rumors about Victor and ANTIFA, and then cowboy up with a FAFO attitude towards perps with knives, even disabled teens, until it all blew over. Of course you’d have to be spectacularly incompetent to believe that any of that would work after viewing the video of the event seen around the world. Welcome to Pocatello.
It wasn’t until the Al Sharpton brigade from the West Coast showed up that any city official demonstrated as much as an iota of remorse. It was also when, perhaps coincidentally, the public got the city’s first substantial response to the incident with the release of several new videos, including the police body camera footage. City officials seemed to think that the body camera footage (links above) would exonerate the officers involved. Have a look and see for yourself. If anything, the body camera video and audio make the response look even worse.
All of this is indicative of exactly how deeply ingrained hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil groupthink is in the dominant culture of this region. Would effectively getting out in front of this have prevented looming lawsuits? Probably not. But it’s way better to be facing years of turmoil with the community behind you than having them after you right behind the lawyers with tar and feathers.
“All I can say is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims—and as far as possible one must refuse to be on the side of the pestilence.”
― Albert Camus, The Plague
Life is not all fun and games. For people like Victor, especially, life is often confusing, sad, and short. Victor’s denouement may have ultimately come at the hands of the PPD, but he was, in a manner of speaking, under the gun from the beginning.
Mental illness and disability have haunted my life. I have seen firsthand what untreated mental illness and the burdens of a severe disability do to individuals and families. You can’t unring that bell. I would not wish such trauma on my worst enemy. It’s too awful.
Years ago, America had an imperfect but functional system of group homes for people who might have a difficult time integrating into society at large. There were many well-documented instances of abuse in this system since the disabled are easy targets. But instead of reforming the system, we burned it to the ground. These days the burden of caring for the mentally ill and/or disabled is placed on families who often lack the resources to deal with the situation. Worse, the mentally ill or disabled are, as a last resort, dumped into public spaces to fend for themselves.
I don’t know what Victor’s home life was like. I don’t know who was in his home or much about the circumstances there in the hours leading up to his death. What I am struck by is the camera footage from a nearby business that shows Victor fighting in the backyard with individuals from within the home for quite a while before the police arrived. I don’t really understand this.
I have known many families with children on the autism spectrum or with other special needs. I’ve coached a fair number of special needs kids in youth sports through the years. I have right now a child in my home with special needs. I’m fully aware of how tough it can be to stay composed when the need for care comes at you day in and day out whether you are ready for it or not. It’s a rough row to hoe. Not everyone can do what needs to be done. If you are one of those folks, you have my respect to the moon and back.
But never under any circumstances have I felt the need to use a stick to calm a kid down in the pasture out back. Never has a kid, even with severe behavioral problems, pulled a kitchen knife on me. I’m perplexed about what led Victor into that backyard armed with a kitchen knife on that fateful afternoon. I’m further perplexed as to why the call to police did not originate with the family. Perhaps it was, as claimed, Victor having a familiar meltdown that the family knew would pass. But perhaps it was a caregiver or someone else in the home handling things in a less than optimal manner. I, myself, have spent many nights unable to sleep, replaying the events of a day over and over in my head, trying to figure out how to get it right the next time. Until you’ve dealt with someone who requires such care, you have no idea how challenging it can be. That’s why I feel my fellow caregivers’ pain. I really do.
Victor, by all accounts, had the mental capacity of a 5- to 6-year-old. That means that Victor’s comprehension of the world around him was incomplete, confusing, and frustrating. As a result, Victor somehow concluded that he needed a knife that afternoon. Was it to attack someone or to defend himself? As I watch Victor’s last moments on video, I see a kid who may have just been trying to defend himself against perceived dangers, whether real or imagined.
This is the part that I can’t unsee when I watch the videos of Victor’s final seconds. We teach preschoolers that the police protect us from bad people. Victor likely believed that. I am horrified by the possibility that Victor, as a result of the events leading up to the arrival of police and in the subsequent confusion of being surrounded by people yelling things at him that he didn’t understand, got up to run towards people he thought were there to help him.
Instead, they ended his life.
Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, and arranging and playing music. Follow him on Twitter @MartinHackworth, on Facebook at facebook.com/martin.hackworth, and on Substack at martinhackworthsubstack.com