Before the police officer shooting of Timothy Jones in Ruidoso in 2015, the last fatal officer shooting in Ruidoso took place on April 23, 1971. Paul Green, who had been arrested earlier in the day, asked to make a call and was led to the police department’s phone, dialed a number, suddenly dropped the receiver and ran from the building. Officer Victor Brooks ran after the escaping prisoner. In his later retelling of events, confirmed by the dispatcher, Brooks yelled for Green to stop and then fired a warning shot. Green continued to run yelling either “Go ahead and shoot” or “If you’re going to stop me, you’re going to have to shoot me.” Brooks again shouted for Green to stop and then fired, hitting the prisoner in the back of the head. Green was pronounced dead on arrival at the Ruidoso-Hondo Valley General Hospital by Lincoln County Coroner Dr. W. D. Horton at 6:15 p.m.

The shooting was a one-column article in the April 20 Ruidoso News. Nine months later, the shooting was the subject of a larger expose in the Washington Post titled “Dying Young in New Mexico” by James Rowen. A piece on the rash of “hippie killings’ in the state, the shooting of Paul Green was the centerpiece of an article informing the country of what was happening now that “…thousands of ‘longhairs’  [were moving] into the Southwest.”

More than the length and tone of articles and physical distance between the newspapers separate the two accounts. Each was written for different audiences, the scope and focus were different and some facts occurred in one account and not in the other.

On many things, however, the articles agreed.

Paul Green was a 22 year old who had been in Ruidoso for a short period of time. Green and his female companion were arrested at 2 p.m. and charged with lewd cohabitation. Both were brought before Municipal Judge Austin A. Pritchett. Green was fined $100 and sentenced to 30 days in the Ruidoso jail. The sentence against his female companion was suspended.

The description of the phone call and his escape are also similar.

Where the articles diverge is in the reporting of the events after the shooting.

The Ruidoso News article tells how Ruidoso Chief of Police O. S. Montes, Lincoln County Sheriff Ernest Sanchez and Deputy Sheriff Leandro Vega immediately launched an investigation on the shooting. Based on their findings, a warrant was issued by Lincoln County Magistrate Division I Judge Bill Payne in Carrizozo against Officer Brooks on the complaint of voluntary manslaughter. The complaint was authorized by Assistant District Attorney Larry Pickett from Las Cruces. Brooks was arraigned before Judge Payne, posted a $2500 bond and was released pending a preliminary hearing. According to the Ruidoso News, this hearing took place at 10 a.m. the next morning.

In the May 14 edition of the Ruidoso News, in a small box at the bottom placed as the edition was going to print, was the breaking news that a Lincoln County Grand Jury had just returned a no bill against Officer Brooks and that all charges had been dropped at the request of the District Attorney.

Both papers noted that Mayor George P. White named May 18 as “Victor Brooks Fund Day” and that area businesses were raising money for Brooks’ legal fees.

While the Ruidoso News emphasized the village’s support of Officer Brooks, the Washington Post concentrated on Paul Green’s life immediately before the shootings.

His girlfriend, Nancy Tapper Crowe (she was named in this article) came to Ruidoso with her infant son from El Paso after separating from her husband. She began writing to Green, her high school sweetheart from Wheaton, Maryland, and he came to Ruidoso. He worked as a maintenance man at the Sierra Blanca Cabins and they moved into Cabin 11.

Crowe’s mother was not happy with the arrangement and repeatedly complained to local officials about the couple’s living together.

Ruidoso police officers visited with Green and Crowe noting the complaints. Since the couple had already decided to move, they did not take the warning seriously.

Two days later, they were arrested.

At the hearing before Judge Pritchett, the couple tried to explain their living arrangement. The Washington Post noted that the judge ordered Crowe to leave town immediately or lose custody of her child.

The paper also reported a discrepancy in the way Judge Pritchett handled the case.

New Mexico had a statute prohibiting a man and a woman from “cohabitating together as man and wife.” The penalty was a verbal warning and a maximum $20 fine.

Ruidoso had a village ordinance with a stiffer penalty and that to be found guilty, the couple must not only be living together, but it be proven that sexual relations took place: evidence that was not presented.

The Washington Post article made a point that the judge found the couple guilty of the lesser standard of guilt but imposed the harsher penalty.

It also noted that the same penalty had been handed down the year before by the same judge for a defendant that had been found guilty of shooting and wounding another man with a 12-gauge shotgun.

Perhaps the largest omission from the Ruidoso News was the fact that Green, while trimming trees at the Sierra Blanca Cabins, had sliced his foot with an ax two weeks before his arrest. The owner of the cabins had rushed him to the hospital where he received stitches to his instep. According to Crowe, Green had been using a cane up until just a few days before he was shot. At the autopsy, a note was included that the stitches were still in Green’s foot.

The article then asked an obvious question: Just how fast and how far could Green have run in this condition?

Underlying The Washington Post’s tone was not only the Southwest’s and, in particular, Ruidoso’s treatment of hippies, but also its Wild West mentality towards law enforcement. Of the two articles, the Ruidoso News is clearly more objective, even as it left out pertinent details.

The Washington Post’s depiction of a typical family as driving “…a pickup truck with a .30-.30 Winchester rifle mounted in the rear window” may be overblown, as was its honing in on Lincoln’s Pageant re-enacting the escape of Billy the Kid. Its background information that the Lincoln County War was “…a bloody range dispute between cattlemen and sheepherders” is incorrect but its description that “Ruidoso’s economy is centered around the tourist trade. The biggest attraction is ‘fabulous’ Ruidoso Downs Racetrack, site of each summer of the nation’s richest horse race, the All-American Futurity. The winter economy is keyed to a nearby ski valley” could have been written yesterday instead of almost 45 years ago.

Perhaps most difficult to reconcile is the timing of events. If the Ruidoso News’ timeline is correct and Paul Green was pronounced dead April 23 at 6:15 p.m. and an investigation was conducted, a warrant authorized and issued and Brooks was arraigned all before 10 a.m. the next morning with a Grand Jury verdict announced less than three weeks later, perhaps the image of frontier justice was not so exaggerated.

It is hoped that by delving into the present-day process, one that takes considerably longer and is dependent on more agencies, technology and checks-and-balances that the romantic notions so often still held will give way to a confidence and greater understanding of the system as a whole.