The killing of Victor Perez, a non-verbal, autistic, disabled teen, by Pocatello Police. Part II.

We need a new direction around here. It's called addition by subtraction. You feel me?

This is the second installment of a three-part series. For Part I, click here.

Last Saturday, Victor Perez, an autistic, non-verbal teen with cerebral palsy who was shot nine times by Pocatello, ID, police responding to a public disturbance call, passed away after his family removed him from life support. Victor spent the last days of his life in a local hospital on life support after multiple surgeries, including a leg amputation. My heart aches; it really does. Rest in peace, kid.

It took several days for the police to hold a press conference about this tragedy and almost a week for Pocatello Mayor Brian Blad to come forward with a completely inadequate statement addressing the city’s response. A public protest held at city hall last Saturday to demand accountability from the PPD and city officials was met with an armed response in the form of snipers on nearby rooftops. I kid you not. You just can’t make this stuff up.

Welcome to Pocatello. As of right now, the city’s official responses have been a botched press conference by the police chief, the most milquetoast possible statement by a mayor who had nearly a week to come up with something more appropriate and sensible, and having police snipers on rooftops at a peaceful protest. There have been no apologies or acknowledgement of the severity of this tragedy. If you think that this looks a lot like officials responding to a crisis with little more than their thumbs up their asses, you are absolutely, positively correct.

But the general appearance of paralysis doesn’t mean that nothing’s going on behind the curtain. Local authorities are already telegraphing their cover-our-asses strategy by slagging the victim in whispered off-the-record leaks. “We’ve responded to several calls at that residence.” “He was a known bully and troublemaker at school.” “Lots of people were afraid of him.” It’s the same with the need for police snipers at the protest rally: “We had information from the FBI of a credible threat to police from ANTIFA at the protest.” On that particular account, I am 100% certain that the report of a credible threat was 100% true based on 100% bullshit.

The last time that Pocatello made the national news like this past week was during my time at Idaho State University when we made the front page of The New York Times with the headline “The Mideast Came to Idaho State. It Wasn’t the Best Fit.” Just like now, back then, the relevant authorities had essentially no idea how to address a problem with solutions that were obvious to nearly everyone else. That, in a nutshell, is politics in Pocatello—a farce enabled by our version of the not-ready-for-primetime players, currently led by Mayor Brian Blad and a city council full of sycophants and fools.

It’s a multigenerational tragedy.

Years ago, I owned an audio company that produced festivals and events here in Pocatello. During the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, I was hired as the engineer for the house at the Eccles Center in Park City, where I got to meet and work with a number of wonderful, internationally renowned artists during the several-month-long Olympic Festival: Pilobolus Dance, Moses Pendelton, Eileen Ivers, Alvin Ailey Dance, and many others. It was a good time.

As the festival was winding down, I had several invitations to continue to work with artists with whom I’d formed relationships. One of them, in particular, asked me if I’d be willing to work with him on more shows around here. This gentleman had an impressive pedigree, having performed for many years with a Grammy Award-winning group back when Grammys were a recognition of the pinnacle of achievement rather than something recorded in a bedroom with cheap microphones.

That spring, a group of people here in Pocatello approached me with an idea for a festival. It was, I believed, the very definition of serendipity. The fit between this artist and the festival was ideal. The cost was low (and mostly paid for by sponsors), and though it was going to be a complex event spanning several days and venues, it was entirely doable. It was a match made in heaven.

Or so I thought.

A few weeks before the event, I got a request from the committee responsible for the festival for a headshot of the artist. This was back in the days when faxes were still a thing, so I faxed one over. About 15 minutes later I received a call asking if I could attend a meeting concerning the festival later that day. It struck me as odd, but not particularly concerning, until, that is, I walked into the room.

The entire committee was present, something that had not happened in any other meeting I’d been to. And it didn’t take them long to get right to why. “There are, it seems, some things about this performer you have withheld from us.” I was perplexed. As the comments directed to me bounced around the room, I struggled to figure out what was going on. “Do we really want someone with gold chains and a shirt partially unbuttoned representing our cause?” “How much do we really know about this person?” I was stunned. How the hell much do you need to know about an established artist you are hiring to perform at a festival in the middle of nowhere? It’s not like they’re asking for your daughter’s hand in marriage.

Then it hit me. Until they saw the headshot, no one there realized that this artist was Black. At the dawn of the 21st century, I found myself in a room full of leading citizens who were figuring out a way to get out of hiring an artist to headline a festival because he bore the mark of Cain.

I have been around the block more than a few times in my life. I’ve watched loved ones suffer and die; I’ve lost things that I cared about a lot; I’ve failed when it was really important not to; I’ve been so, so close to things I really worked for only to watch them slip away. But calling that artist that night to explain what happened was one of the hardest things I've ever done. To this day I will go a block out of my way to avoid walking past the building where this occurred. I sold my audio company a few weeks later.

The reality around here, one that everyone understands but that no one wants to talk about in anything other than whispers, is that we live in a religious theocracy disguised as a normal community. The veneer is pretty thin at that. This dynamic shapes everything around us. If you are on the inside, everything is easy because the skids are always greased for you. If you aren’t, look up Sisyphus to see what you are in for. You think that I’m full of shit? Explain to me how you imagine that the 911 call that got Victor killed would have been handled if the address, instead of being literally on the wrong side of the tracks, had been in the Highland neighborhood two blocks from the Temple?

Yeah, I thought so.

That’s why we have the Bannock County Sheriff investigating Victor’s killing at the hands of the PPD instead of a more impartial agency further away from local groupthink. That’s why the same nimrods who are quietly blaming the victim for his own demise think that it’s not a bad look at all to have snipers on nearby rooftops at a peaceful protest. Who cares when they are all gentiles anyway?

In general, this explains why it's acceptable here to lend taxpayer-funded equipment and services to other communities without any compensation, why it's acceptable to mistreat and ignore downtown merchants (also on the wrong side of the tracks), why it's acceptable to cheat landowners in dubious real estate transactions, and why it's acceptable to disregard treaty obligations with the Shoshone Bannock Tribe when promoting a useless airport development on their land.

Before the slime campaign against Victor has a chance to emerge from the shadows, I want to see the police reports about rumored previous calls to the home, and I want to hear directly from schoolteachers or social workers who thought that Victor was dangerous. And that bodycam footage that Mayor Blad has promised (something that the PPD never volunteers)—let’s see that. In fact, what’s the holdup?

As bad as you think that all of this is, it may actually be worse. The tragedy of Victor’s short life and violent demise is even worse, I suspect, than anyone realizes. I have some serious questions about what happened to Victor before the police arrived on that fateful day. Reports suggest that someone at the residence struck Victor in the head with a log before police arrived. I know many local families who have children on the autism spectrum. Not a single one of those children needs to be struck in the head with a log to calm them down. If this is true, I’d like to know who hit him and why. Had something like this happened before?

Lots of questions. The only thing I know for sure right now is that if there is a place for lost souls on the other side of the River Styx, Charon’s going to need a bigger boat.

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