An Excellent Guy

On an island where the seriously screwy tends to be treated, well, seriously, even this situation has 3.6 million people scratching their heads.

Simply put, James Tuller, who had been chief of the New York City Police Department Transportation Bureau and who for four months had been acting as the designated chief of the Puerto Rico Police Department turned out…

…to be cheating on his taxes.

Or maybe not—who knows? But Tuller has been married since 1996, and yet for four years he filed as a single person. So that presented a bit of a challenge, since those pesky senators in charge of approving his nomination were insisting on seeing the tax returns. So what did Tuller do?

Well, he had a couple of strategies—the first of which was to stall. And though it’s true that we tend to move a bit more slowly than those goose-stepping Germans, stalling is a tactic that only works so long.

So the next thing to do was to run up to New York and amend his tax returns. But it turned out—curious, this—that there was a little difference between what he had to pay as a single person versus a married person. Oh, and there were penalties, as well. Nevertheless, he forked over $30,000 to the State of New York. (according to one report, he took five days off work to go up to New York to settle these trifles and get the silly paperwork…)

Did that make the senators happy? By no means. Intent on picking every nit, the senators demanded that Tuller pay the IRS as well. Then they’d see about the nomination—no promises.

So that led to the next problem, which was that Tuller didn’t have the dough, despite making close to 200,000 bucks a year. He was willing, though, to agree to a payment plan. But the senators still balked at assuring him of his nomination. So on Monday night, after 121 days on the job, this excellent though somewhat forgetful public servant made the decision: he would retire his name for consideration.

This has left even members of the governor’s own party wondering what in the world went wrong.  Part of it, of course, was that there was a scramble to find a police superintendent in the first place, since Tuller’s predecessor had up and left one day, all but flipping the bird at the governor as he rode to the airport. And it came at a rather poor time, since the senate was not in session, and it was Christmas.

Ah, Christmas—which in Puerto Rico generally begins the day after Thanksgiving Day and continues until at least the end of January—Fiestas de la Calle de San Sebastián—after the octavitas. So really, it’s only been a couple of months since any of us have had time to trouble ourselves about inessentials like appointing a police chief.

Well, it’s all a little troubling, since we also don’t have a secretary of justice, since that guy got into a little trouble when he went to the police station with his friend. His friend, you see, had been drinking at a party—well, that’s what you do at parties, isn’t it? And look, you gotta get home, don’t you? Does everybody have to be so unreasonable?

Right, so everything would have been fine if only the friend hadn’t pulled out his cell phone while driving—a crime in Puerto Rico. And of course, there had to be that nosy cop, who pulled the friend over, and noted the strong smell of alcohol.

So the papers had a field day with the Secretary of Justice, who had done what any friend would do: gone to the aid of his friend to the police headquarters, to ensure that everything was handled correctly. What harm could there be in that?

So it’s all a bit dampening, especially for the governor, who had to come out in today’s print version of El Nuevo Día as saying, “entiendo, por la información pública que ha surgido….” Or, “I understand, from the public information that has surfaced…” The Gov, apparently, is a regular guy like you or me—getting his news by reading the paper on the bus to work. See?

And all this comes at a rather unsettling time, since the United States Department of Justice…wait, let those fire-breathing liberals from the ACLU tell you about it:

A report released by the ACLU in June 2012 concludes that the Puerto Rico Police Department is plagued by a culture of unrestrained abuse and impunity. The PRPD – which, with over 17,000 officers, is the second-largest police department in the U.S – is charged with policing the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

In July 2013, the U.S. Justice Department entered into a legally binding consent decree with the Puerto Rican government that requires sweeping reforms to end the widespread police brutality on the island.

Well, to make sure that the police department complies with the “sweeping reforms,” Tuller appointed a retired US Army colonel, Michelle Hernández de Fraley, to oversee the whole process. And good luck to her, since the US Department of Justice determined that the police practiced discrimination, especially against blacks and Dominicans, were poorly trained, and didn’t investigate cases of domestic abuse. Oh, and that they used excessive force, especially in cases of peaceful protest.

Nor is that the only challenge she might face, if nominated and approved. Because we have more police officers than any place I have ever seen—but the monthly pay for our cops? It’s $2,600, or slightly over 30,000 dollars annually. On the island, that’s not bad—but consider, the other news of this morning: the police hauled in nearly two tons of cocaine in an interception off the north coast of Puerto Rico. In fact, in March alone, the police have pulled in nearly three tons of cocaine.

And what does that mean?

Well, we’re awash in drugs, and with the drugs comes the money, and with the money? Corruption—which is a distinct possibility. How much honesty does a base salary of $30,000 buy you?

The sad news is that the previous chief of police was—by all accounts—a very effective guy who had the support of the force, even as he was changing it. And the one who just left?

By all accounts an excellent guy…

Look, he just cheated on his taxes….

Julia Child Steps Onto the Stage

OK—I could tell you that the buzz on the island is that the secretary of justice, a guy by the name of Luis Sánchez Betances, ran over to the police station last Friday night, since a buddy of his, Jaime Sifre Rodríguez, who is also a partner in Sánchez’s law firm, got picked up for drunk driving.

In fact, his blood alcohol was .215%, which is high indeed.

Sour minds on the island are wondering what Sánchez Betances was doing there, and some have even gone so far as to breathe aspersions. But relax, dear Reader, there was no impropriety involved—in fact, Sánchez Betances was there to make absolutely sure that the rules were being followed, and that no special treatment was given. He was just there for a friend! Something anyone would do!

And now, of course, warped and twisted minds are attempting to misconstrue a perfectly normal action—how dare they! Here, for example, is an ex district attorney, Osvaldo Carlo:

El exfiscal Osvaldo Carlo dijo en NotiUno que “la mera presencia del secretario de Justicia allí, sin decir una palabra, crea una presión indebida sobre estos agentes de la Policía. Porque, por qué un secretario de Justicia va a estar en el lugar de los hechos si no es para crear un ambiente negativo de la investigación. No tenía ni que decir una sola palabra. Él tenía otras maneras de trabajar con ese asunto que no fuese presentarse allí, porque al presentarse allí iban a sentir la presión del cargo”.

(The ex attorney Osvaldo Carlo said to NotiUno that “the mere presence of the secretary of justice there, without saying a word, creates undue pressure on those police agents. Why? Because why is a secretary of justice going to be there if not to create a negative environment for the investigation? He doesn’t have to say a word. He has other ways of working this affair without being there, because by being there they were going to feel the pressure.”)

Poppycock!

Turning away from such negativity, what’s the deal with Lee Hoiby?

Why, you may ask, am I worrying about Hoiby? Because over the weekend, I was watching Renée Fleming talk about Leontyne Price, who had championed Hoiby’s work. So what was up with Hoiby?

Well, I knew he had a Wisconsin connection, but I didn’t know that he was actually born in Madison in 1926, had studied with Gunnar Johansen, and had later attended Mills College. His compositions draw the attention of Gian Carlo Menotti, who showed them to Samuel Barber. Menotti also invited Hoiby to Curtis to study with him: no small thing, since Menotti was the leading opera composer of the time.

And Hoiby didn’t follow the fashion of the time—which was to compose highly dissonant music. Instead, his music is tuneful, lyrical, and sophisticated. And his specialty? Here’s what he told Zachary Woolfe:

“It was the singers, not the instrumentalists,” he said. “The instrumentalists didn’t know who the fuck I was. I didn’t have any instrumental music played. Singers, you can’t fool them. When they hear a song, they can tell right away if it’s going to make them sound good. And mine do.”

Here’s what Woolfe has to say about the songs:

Indeed, it seems likely that his songs-whose brilliant and varied texts, chosen by Mr. Shulgasser, range from Bishop to Roethke to Stevens to Rilke-will be what last the longest of his work. Perfectly honed little worlds, they benefit most from his modesty. Small shifts, like the opening into ecstatic brightness of the third stanza of “The Message” (set to a John Donne poem), take on a kind of humble grandeur.

In the interview with Woolfe, Hoiby said the following: “All I did was compose. I never went anywhere, I didn’t know anybody. I never went to any parties. I never met anybody. I’m basically not interested in social life, I guess.”

Well, he must have watched television, because his spoof on Julia Child is bang on. In the words of Joseph Dalton:

All of Child’s lovable foibles and self-deprecating humor come through. She puts egg yolks into a pan and then drops it on the kitchen floor and carries on undaunted. She also sets up a race between an electric mixer and a hand-cranked one. Hoiby wisely doesn’t interfere with the chef’s magic. There’s no additional jokes or layers of irony in the tuneful score, which includes a light and colorful orchestration.

And as light as the piece—and the cake—is, there’s also something tinged with melancholy about Hoiby’s work. Is it because I know that he must have been dealing with being gay in a decade—the fifties—that was perhaps the most homophobic of the century? Is it because he never quite attained the celebrity of Gian Carlo Menotti? I feel about him what I feel about Barber: at the end, he must have felt he had given too much, and gotten too little.