Man could face hate-crime charges in conflict with neighbors - Santa Fe New Mexican

Police arrested a Santa Fe man this week after reports from frightened neighbors that he had called them racial slurs, made Nazi salutes and fired gunshots in a residential block near Frenchy’s Field Park.

Nobody was injured in the incident late Thursday morning in the 1100 block of Maez Road, though a criminal complaint says Zachary Stanton, 40, spit on a police officer as he was being placed in handcuffs.

Police booked Stanton into the Santa Fe County jail on one misdemeanor count of assault on a peace officer and five fourth-degree felony charges, including aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and tampering with evidence, according to jail records and a criminal complaint filed Friday in the Santa Fe County Magistrate Court.

An officer marked in a report that the incident was an anti-Hispanic crime, according to a police department spokesman, but it’s unclear whether Stanton will be charged with a hate crime.

The incident is a reminder that Santa Fe is not immune to the racism recently pushed into the spotlight after a gathering of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., turned deadly earlier this month. A counterdemonstrator was killed when a vehicle allegedly driven by a member of a white nationalist group plowed into the crowd.

Santa Fe police faced an outcry after the Charlottesville incident about a police sergeant’s inflammatory messages posted on Facebook months earlier, including one that joked about protesters getting hit by cars. Sgt. Troy Baker also posted controversial messages about minorities, Muslims, women and illegal immigration.

Baker, then head of the police union, has said the posts were jokes. The incident had been under investigation for months, but Baker was placed on administrative desk duty after the Charlottesville incident renewed concerns. Earlier this week, he announced his retirement, but Baker will remain on the city’s payroll for nine months, receiving compensation for sick time and other paid leave.

City officials have refused to release any records of the six-month investigation into his social media posts.

Days before the Charlottesville rally, a local political advocacy group came under fire when one member sent a racist meme to a critic and another member of the group posted a racist poem on a reporter’s Facebook page.

But incidents involving people accused of race-based crimes are rare here.

Santa Fe police Officer Roberto Rodriguez wrote in his criminal complaint that he went to Stanton’s home on Maez Road around 11:30 a.m. Thursday after neighbors reported concerns about Stanton. Two police officers were already putting Stanton in handcuffs when he arrived, Rodriguez wrote, and Stanton spit on one of them.

Video recordings from a neighbor’s security camera showed Stanton with a handgun and a cellphone, loudly threatening to kill the neighbor if he came to Stanton’s home, the complaint says. The neighbor told the officer he first saw Stanton standing outside, “saluting like a Nazi,” yelling racial slurs at neighbors and telling them “they were on his land,” according to the complaint.

The man told officers he went inside his home after Stanton pointed a gun at him, and then he heard a gunshot.

A man who answered the door at the neighbor’s home Friday confirmed that surveillance video of the incident had been given to police, but he otherwise declined to comment. Nobody answered the door at the address listed for Stanton.

A woman who lives in the neighborhood told police she had friends at her home Thursday, including children, when Stanton began making a “white salute” and calling them “Mexicans.” He pointed a gun at her son, she said, and the group ran inside the home. Then they heard gunshots, she told police.

Police could not find the cellphone and handgun Stanton was holding in the video, according to the complaint.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Padgett on Friday filed a motion asking a judge to delay Stanton’s first appearance in court so prosecutors can investigate whether to request that he remain in jail until his trial. A county magistrate approved the motion.

Stanton previously faced charges of battery on a police officer and assault with a deadly weapon, but the charges in one case were dropped, and prosecutors didn’t move forward with another case.

He has had conflicts with neighbors before. In February, he filed a police report alleging 15 neighborhood kids had beaten him, according to a report in the Albuquerque Journal. The newspaper said one of the boys told police that Stanton had started the confrontation by calling them “wetbacks” and cursing at them.

The newspaper quoted Stanton as saying police told him “to use the Second Amendment next time they come into my yard.”

“I have a right to defend myself and I’m going to do that if they come back,” Stanton added, according to the story.

Asked if any officer gave Stanton such advice, Greg Gurulé, a spokesman for the Santa Fe Police Department, said in an email Friday: “After reviewing all records related to this incident there appears to be no record of our officers saying anything to Mr. Stanton about the 2nd Amendment.”

Gurulé did not provide The New Mexican with any records from the February incident despite a request for the documents Friday.

Gurulé directed questions about whether the boys faced any repercussions to another agency that handles juvenile justice cases.

It will be up to the district attorney to determine whether Stanton will be charged with a hate crime in Thursday’s incident, Gurulé said, adding that Santa Fe police send hate-crime reports to the FBI, which tracks them nationally.

Stanton was taken in for a mental health evaluation, Gurulé said, “so it is uncertain how that will play out as the case moves along.”

In December 2013, Stanton was charged with a fourth-degree felony of battery on a peace officer and a misdemeanor of resisting arrest, according to court records. He pleaded not guilty to the charges, which were later dropped.

He was arrested in 2012 in Bernalillo County on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and use of a firearm, but court records show prosecutors did pursue the case for unspecified reasons.

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