Elisabeth Malkin's Metaphor for Justice

A law enforcement experiment,
a drug-ravaged border town,
a 20-year-old police chief

fired after failing to turn up for work, 

a college criminology student, hired in October. 

Nobody would take the job.

To avoid the drug gangs warring
for control, she did not gun or uniform.
Made it clear that she would leave

higher authorities. Last week, she asked
a three-day leave to care for her son,
and there, speculation: she had been threatened.

She did not show up on Monday
when the mayor of a town near Juárez fired
her. Nobody knows where she is,

or whether there was threatened.
Gustavo de la Rosa Hickerson:
“a witness saw her safely cross a bridge

to El Paso. But with the threats
law enforcement officials face — a chief
beheaded – ”

Town officials were not alarmed:
“We’re confident that she is safe
some place. If there were a kind of situation,

we know about it. That kind of news just

flies.” And the mayor wished her the best 

in any future projects she may take on.