TARGETED

Prejudice and Racial Bias in the

Albuquerque Police Department

ABQJustice

APD Brutality
The Albuquerque Police Department has a long history of violence.

KILLED

100
APD has

people from 1987-2014

And shot at least

146

87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14

A per-capita kill rate

Lawsuits totalled

2X 8X $23
and

higher than

higher than

Chicago

NYPD

million

DEADLY FORCE

since 2014

- DOJ report

ABQ Murderers at Record Low in 2014

70

70
60
50
40 34
30

28

20
10
90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14

Yet APD committed 20% of Homicides

APD engages in a PATTERN

or PRACTICE of use of
EXCESSIVE FORCE, including

Despite this, Mayor

Berry and Chief Gordon
Deny DOJs Allegations
of Wrongoing by APD

ABQJustice

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
ABQJustice | March 2015

ABQJustice formed in 2014 as a community

-based group of activists and residents concerned
with poverty, inequality and police brutality in
Albuquerque. ABQJustice has worked in coalition with social justice and civil rights organizations
to confront violence, racism and injustice in
Albuquerque. ABQJustice launched an investigation into racial bias and forms of prejudice in the
Albuquerque Police Department in September
of 2014. This report presents the findings of that
investigation.

ment that does not provide solutions for racially

motivated use of force issues at APD. Based on
these concerns, ABQJustice:

Why an ABQJustice Investigation?

Findings

The Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation of

use-of-force prolems at the Albuquerque Police
Department (APD) concluded that APD engages in a pattern and practice of unjustified use
of excessive force, including deadly force. After
months of negotiation, the City of Albuquerque
and DOJ entered into a consent decree, which
outlines how APD reform will happen.

This is the first study to systematically acquire

data by and about the people routinely victimized by APD, demonstrating that unconstitutional policing and unjustified use-of-force at APD is
not only routine, but significantly underreported. The street interviews, conducted by teams of
ABQJustice investigators, confirmed that:

ABQJustice, along with social justice and civil

rights organizations in Albuquerque, note the
DOJs failure to investigate racial bias and prejudice at APD. This failure has produced an agree-

1. APD systematically engages in racially motivated forms of policing targeting people of color,
particularly Native Americans.
2. APD engages in violence against women, including sexual violence.

1. Launched its own investigation of police violence by conducting field interviews in locations
around Albuquerque from September 2014 to
February 2015.
2. Convened a Peoples Tribunal on Police Brutality on March 14, 2015 to publicly present and
consider the results of the field investigation, and
to release a report of its findings.

3. APD specifically and routinely engages in harassment of homeless people.

2. Routine extensive outreach to collect complaints against APD.

3. The acceptance of anonymous complaints
against APD.
4. The decriminalization of homelessness.
5. Police officers who use unjustified force must
be held criminally accountable.
6. The publishing of all officer shift rosters at
the end of each week, and the immediate online
posting of all lapel camera video.
7. The recruitment of officer candidates who
hold degrees, or have experience, in, social work
or allied fields.
8. Limiting promotion to officers who have experience in, or show an inclination for, community-based policing.

Expectations
The ABQJustice investigation shows that the police oversight agencies, in place from 1997 to the
present, have failed to resolve the systemic problems at APD. ABQJustice believes this is because
the authority of these agencies is limited to an
advisory capacity.
The solutions outlined in this report call for:
1. An independent agency with the authority to
discipline officers and make policy changes.

Background

Since January of 2010, the Albuquerque Police

Department has killed 28 people in 42 officer-involved shootings, a per-capita kill rate nearly
double that of the Chicago police and eight times
that of the NYPD.1

That report, released on April 10, 2014, concluded that the Albuquerque Police Department
engages in a pattern and practice of unconstitutional policing and routinely uses unjustified
lethal and non-lethal force.2

Beginning in 2010, a coalition of social justice

organizations in Albuquerque, which included
the ANSWER Coalition, the League of United
Latin American Citizens, the Martin Luther
King Jr. Memorial Center, the American Civil
Liberties Union and many others, combined
with family members of many of the victims of
officer-involved shootings in Albuquerque, including the families of Ken Ellis III, Len Fuentes,
Alan Gomez and Christopher Torres, all killed
by APD officers since 2010, and demanded a
federal investigation of police violence in Albuquerque.

While the report confirmed many of the criticisms made by family members and social justice
and civil rights organizations in Albuquerque,
it stopped short of conducting a comprehensive
analysis of the problem. The report limited its examination of police violence to the years 2009
2011, largely ignoring a much longer pattern of
unjustified use of force by APD. In addition, the
report failed to consider patterns of racial bias,
or other forms of prejudice, in the patterns of
unconstitutional policing by APD.
The problem of police violence, and the pattern
of official disinterest in resolving the problem,
has a much longer history than described by the
DOJ. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, community organizations, such as the Black Berets,
confronted a pattern of racially motivated police
violence directed at Chicano youth. This pattern
continued through the 1980s and 1990s. Between
1987 and 1991, APD officers killed 15 people, a
number that exceeded fatal shootings over the

In November of 2012, against the objections of

Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry, the United
States Department of Justice announced that
the Special Litigation Section of its Civil Rights
Division would launch an investigation of allegations that APD officers engage in use of excessive force, including use of unreasonable deadly
force, in their encounters with civilians.
3

same period in Tucson, Austin, El Paso, Colorado Springs and Tulsa combined.

In 2004, Jay Rowland, the citys Independent

Review Officer, asked APD to release data on
the number of times officers used force in the
line of duty. The resulting report, the third since
the late-1980s, revealed that officers used force
551 times in 2004. They tackled somebody to
the ground nearly 200 times; they used mace or
pepper spray nearly 150 times; they Tasered 85
suspects; they punched or kicked 63 people; they
delivered 22 baton blows; they sicced dogs on 12
suspects; they killed three people.

Between 1992 and 1996, APD killed 16 people.

In 1996 the Albuquerque City Council commissioned a study to examine the problem.3 The
subsequent Walker-Luna report found no other
police department in the United States of comparable size that killed as many people as the Albuquerque Police Department.
One of the co-authors of the 1997 report, Samuel Walker, an internationally recognized expert in police accountability and the author of a
number of foundational textbooks on policing,
told a reporter from The New Yorker, When we
gave an oral presentation to the city council [in
1997], I had a very strong impression that many
city-council members were not interested. In
a February 2015 New Yorker article on police
violence in Albuquerque, reporter Rachel Aviv
wrote, [Walker] described his conversation
with Martin Chvez, the mayor, as one of the
most hostile interviews hes ever conducted. He
said that the police chief would not look him in
the eyes when he briefed him. One city- council
member refused to meet with him or return his
calls.4

Since 1987, the police department has shot at

least 146 people.5 Officers of the Albuquerque
police department committed more than 20% of
the homicides committed in the City of Albuquerque during 2014.
_______________________________________
Nick Pinto, When Cops Break Bad: Inside a Police
Force Gone Wild, Rolling Stone, January 29, 2015. http://
www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/when-cops-breakbad-albuquerque-police-force-gone-wild- 20150129#ixzz3TRbzIOQK

Findings Letter, Department of Justice, April 2014.

http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/usao- nm/legacy/2015/01/20/140410%20DOJ-APD%20Findings%20
Letter.pdf

Samuel Walker and Eileen Luna, A Report on the

Oversight Mechanisms of the Albuquerque Police Department, February 28, 1997. https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.
cloudfront.net/apdforward/pages/33/attachments/original/1406915128/Walker- Luna_Report.pdf?1406915128

Among the recommendations in the 1997 report

were suggestions to create a Police Oversight
Commission (POC) and the office of an Independent Review Officer (IRO). The city council
adopted these and other recommendations.
Despite these reforms, APD officers killed 23
people in the six years that followed, a number
that marked an increase to the rate at which Albuquerque police officers killed people.

Rachel Aviv, Your Son is Deceased: Shot by the Police in

Albuquerque, The New Yorker, February 2, 2015. http://
www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/02/son-deceased
4

See Rachel Aviv

Introduction

prejudice in the use of unjustified force used by

APD.

ABQJustice formed in 2014 as a community-based group of activists and residents concerned with poverty, inequality and police brutality in Albuquerque. ABQJustice has worked
in coalition with social justice and civil rights
organizations to confront violence, racism and
injustice in Albuquerque.

In an amicus brief filed in federal district court,

an attorney representing people with mental
or development disabilities argued that the
proposed agreement... in its current form, is
not fair to people with mental or developmental
disabilities... The agreement does not contain
remedial measures that will halt [APDs] pattern
of unnecessarily using force, and using excessive
levels of force, against people with mental or
developmental disabilities, especially people who
are homeless and/or are Native American.6

This report by ABQJustice on racial bias and

prejudice at APD comes nearly a year after the
Department of Justice released its findings of a
seventeen-month investigation it conducted of
the Albuquerque Police Department. That investigation became the basis for confidential negotiations between the Department of Justice and
the City of Albuquerque conducted during the
last six months of 2014. Those negotiations culminated in a proposed consent decree released
in November 2014.

A coalition of civil rights organizations also filed

a brief, which argued that, The City of Albuquerque has never acknowledged the serious,
longstanding constitutional problems with its
police force. Tacit or overt approval of APDs unconstitutional conduct within the police department and by city administrations past and present have continued despite over twenty years of
civil rights litigation and attempts by community
organizations to bring these endemic problems
to the attention of the City. The brief noted that,
it is not only the mentally ill who have suffered
disproportionately from APD violence, but the

In January 2015, a number of local civil rights

and social justice organizations argued in briefs
filed in federal court that the Department of
Justice investigation ignored questions of racial
bias and prejudice at APD, and therefore the
court-ordered consent decree between the Department of Justice and the City of Albuquerque
has failed to adequately address racial bias and
5

homeless and Native Americans as well. 7

Attorneys who represent various civil rights
groups identified many shortcomings with the
solutions identified by the DOJ to the problem
of police violence in Albuquerque. Those shortcomings are largely the result of an incomplete
investigation of APD violence by DOJ. The lack
of concern for racial bias and prejudice at APD
during the DOJ investigation has produced an
agreement that will not resolve racially motivated use of force issues at APD. Only focusing on
law enforcement solutions is like putting a band
aid on a wound that needs major surgery. 8
Based on these and similar concerns, ABQJustice
launched its own investigation of police violence in Albuquerque in September of 2014. This
report examines everyday police practices in the

City of Albuquerque with a focus on the patterns

and frequency of force used by police officers on
homeless people and people of color.
_______________________________________
6

U.S. v. City of Albuquerque, United States District Court

for the District of New Mexico, Amicus Curiae Brief
on Behalf of People Who Have Mental or Development
Disabilities Who are Detained by the Albuquerque Police
Department, Case 1:14-cv-1025 RB/SMV, document 55,
filed 1/14/2015
U.S. v. City of Albuquerque, United States District Court
for the District of New Mexico, Amicus Curiae Brief of
APD Forward Regarding Court Approval of the Settlement Agreement Between the City of Albuquerque and
the United States Department of Justice, Case 1:14-cv1025 RB/SMV, document 56, filed 1/14/2015
7

APDForward Amicus Brief

Methodology

Investigators conducted 41 interviews.9 Thirty of

the people interviewed were male, eleven were
female, one of whom identified as a transgender
woman. Twenty-one people were Native American; fourteen people were Hispanic; two were
African-American; and four were White/Anglo.
The interviews were transcribed in March 2015,
at which time ABQJustice researchers analyzed
interview responses for all respondents. Instead
of relying on APD self-reported use-of-force
data, as DOJ did, this study relies on street interviews with residents of Albuquerque.
_______________________________________

More than a dozen ABQJustice investigators

spent six months conducing field interviews at
four locations in Albuquerque: 1) the International District, particularly the Central Avenue
corridor between Wyoming and San Mateo; 2)
downtown Albuquerque, particularly the area
surrounding the Alvarado Transportation Center; 3) The campus of the University of New
Mexico; and 4) The Barelas neighborhood. These
four locations were chosen in order to capture a
representative diversity of responses and respondents, and because these four areas include many
of the Citys facilities and services for homeless
(Barelas, downtown), and services and resources
for Native Americans (International District).
Street interviews began in September of 2014
and were completed in February 2015.

Forty-one represents the number of people who agreed

to submit to an interview. Many more people refused
to answer questions, many of whom identified a fear of
reprisal as the reason for refusal.

Findings

Our investigation confirms many of the conclusions of the investigation conducted by the Civil
Rights Division of the Department of Justice. We
found that APD engages in unconstitutional policing, and the frequent, unjustified use of non-lethal
force. The Department of Justice held a series of
three community meetings during its investigation,
but it did not engage in street outreach. Our street
interviews provided a method to capture a pattern
and practice of unconstitutional policing that the
DOJ missed. We find that APD targets people of
color, particularly Native Americans. It systematically engages in racially motivated forms of policing. We find that APD targets homeless people
and routinely violates their constitutional rights.
These patterns of targeting frequently include the
use of unjustified force. In addition, we find that
APD engages in violence against women, including
and most troubling, sexual violence. These findings
confirm many of the claims leveled against APD by
civil rights organizations in briefs in federal court
discussed above.

intimidation, threats and, frequently, unjustified

non-lethal force.
A homeless Hispanic male in his 50s told investigators, When a cop comes up to me I get scared.
They always make an excuse. If I put my hand in
my jacket to grab a cigarette butt, they say that I
grabbed a gun. He described constant harassment:
I cant walk nowhere because they stop me. If Im
just walking down the street they cant just stop me
and say I want to see your ID; they say I got probable cause to search you. He described an incident
when he ran from police. He was unarmed. They
caught me. They took my jacket and put it over my
head, kicked me in the head, split my head open. I
had probably 38 staples in my head. They shattered
every rib on my left-hand side.
A homeless White male in his 40s described
harassment by APD officers that also included
property destruction. When the interviewer asked
whether local police had ever abused him, he explained, Yeah, once the cops handcuffed me and
made me watch them cut up my tent and sleeping bag with razor blades. Theyre real bastards.
When the interviewer asked why APD did that, he
responded, Because they can. Because Im homeless.

Harassment of Homeless People

Our investigation reveals that the Albuquerque
Police Department specifically and routinely engages in the harassment of homeless people. Those
patterns of harassment regularly include the use of
8

Two homeless Native men and one homeless

Native woman in their 40s described an APD
attack on a friend, who is also homeless. According to all three, officers dragged their friend into
an alley where he was beaten. The did it because
hes homeless and Native. And they continue to do
it. explained the woman. The interviewer asked
if APD harassed them. Yeah, [the police] cut up
our IDs and social security cards. They described
frequently receiving citations for loitering. They
come up and give us a ticket for loitering. We go
to court but cant pay and we end up getting a
warrant. We go to jail and get out in the morning.
They described this as a pattern that happened
frequently.

a pillow to put my head on. A bed.

ABQJustice investigators spoke with former Albuquerque police officer Sam Costales about police
treatment of homeless people. He confirmed the
aggressive tactics described by victims in this
report. During Costaless first year on the force,
he took a call of a homeless man sleeping in front
of a business in downtown Albuquerque. As they
approached the man, Costales reported that his
partner said, Let me show you how its done,
Then he put his foot over the homeless persons ankle and he held his nightstick like you would a golf
club and he swung it as hard as he could and he
hit this homeless person in the bottom of his foot.
Needless to say this homeless person stood straight
up in sheer pain and then he said, thats the way
you wake up the homeless.

A homeless Native male and military veteran

described being beaten by APD officers who
stopped him while he was walking down the street.
They asked for an ID. When I reached for it they
slammed me to the ground. The attack knocked
out a tooth.

Every homeless person ABQJustice investigators

interviewed reported physical violence by APD.
Sexual Violence
According to a recent report in Newsweek, sexual
misconduct is the second greatest of all civilian
complaints nationwide against police officers, at
9.3 percent in 2010... 354 of the 618 officers under
investigation for sexual offenses were accused of
engaging in nonconsensual sexual acts, and just
over half of the 354 cases involved minors.10

A homeless Hispanic man described waiting for a

bus at the Alvarado Transit Center when an officer
approached him and threw him to the ground. The
man landed on his face. The officer handcuffed
while he lay on the ground bleeding. He was arrested for criminal trespass. He explained to ABQJustice investigators, APD stereotypes homeless
people.

A recent national study on police sexual misconduct by Bowling Green University found that
police officers were arrested for committing crimes
548 times between 2005-2007. More than 16%
of those arrests included charges for sex-related
crimes.11

APD officers charged a White male for panhandling at the Family Dollar. He told ABQJustice
investigators that a police officer handcuffed him
and then hit him in the face. And now Im going
to get a $500 fine for something I didnt do.

According to a report in the magazine Truthout,

the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network
(RAINN) encounters cases of police-perpetrated
sexual violence more often than one might expect,
with its anonymous hotline receiving calls from
survivors of police sexual violence several times
every month.12

A group of homeless Hispanic men and women

described a pattern of police harassment to investigators: Officers confiscate the signs they use
to ask motorists for help. Two of the group said
that police often arrest homeless people who carry
backpacks. They denied claims by city officials that
some homeless refuse services. Joy Junction is
filled with bedbugs. I would give anything to have
9

ABQJustice investigators spoke in January 2015

to a Hispanic woman and former prostitute in
her 40s. She described a violent 2008 encounter
with an APD officer. She was stopped by a police officer. He told her a warrant was out for her
arrest, but he wouldnt arrest her if she helped
him procure drugs. She refused, telling ABQJustice investigators why would I admit to knowing
where to score crack. The officer handcuffed
the woman and placed her in his squad car and
drove to an empty parking lot. It was dusk. He
removed the handcuffs, placed the woman in the
front seat of the police cruiser and offered the
woman a pint of vodka. He then asked again for
drugs and she again refused. He then said that if
she wanted to avoid jail, she would have to have
sex with him. When she refused, he raped her.

a higher rate. Much of this violence happens in

New Mexico, the state with the highest rate of
police killing in the United Sates in 2014.
Nearly every Native person interviewed described APDs use of racial slurs, such as dirty
Indian. They described encounters that began
with APD officers telling them to go back to the
reservation. One Native man reported: I was
walking on the street and [a cop] was following
me. Id go down the alley and hed follow me.
Why dont you go back to the rez. Youre not
welcome here in Albuquerque, he told me.
A homeless Jicarilla Apache man pointed to the
ground. This is ours, our land, he said. And
the cops theyll say things like Why do you want
to bring the reservation our way? ABQJustice
investigators asked how often harassment is also
violent. Its usually, he said. He showed wrists
covered in scabbed-over wounds he said were
from handcuffs. He pulled off his sunglasses.
One eye was red and swollen. They maced me
in this eye. They walked up to me from behind
and maced me like this, he said, as he put his
hand inches from the interviewers eyes to show
how it was done. How common is this? Does
this happen to everyone? Yes, he said. They
handcuff you and then they beat you and then
they take you to the hospital and say something
like we found him this way.

Four days later, the woman reported the rape to

two APD officers, who took her to the rape crisis
center. She told ABQJustice investigators that she
was too frightened at that time to give the name
of the officer to investigators. They arrested her
on a warrant violation.
Former APD officer Sam Costales found this
story credible, telling ABQJustice investigators
that he reported a case of an APD officer who
demanded sex from women during traffic stops.
I went to Internal Affairs and I told them that
this officer is pulling over women and he told
them that if they gave him oral sex hed let them
go. I went to Internal Affairs and reported this
cop. The detective said its her word against a
cops. They didnt do anything about it. This went
on. They started receiving more and more complaints about this.

A young Native women was reluctant to talk to

investigators but finally described an incident
that happened in the fall of 2014. This cop just
drove up on me, got out and slammed my head
into the pavement. Then he just got in his car
and drove away. She was walking with a friend
who described a constant pattern of harassment.
Well be waiting at the bus stop and cops will
pull up and tell us to keep moving or theyll arrest us for loitering.

Violence against Native Americans

According to the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention, Native Americans make up 0.8
percent of the population, but comprise nearly
two percent of the victims of police violence,
a rate greater than any other racial group. And
while police kill young black men more than
any other group, they kill Native Americans at

A Navajo man in his 30s and a community-college student at CNM described constant harassment. I go to school, CNM, Im not in trouble
10

or anything, you know? But they hassle me.

Called the gang unit and everything. They had
me on my knees, my hands behind my back and
everything.

investigations of use-of-force at APD, including

the 1996 Walker-Luna report, the 2011 PERF
study13 and the 2014 DOJ investigation. Each of
those studies concluded that APD routinely engages in the unjustified use of force. All of those
investigations relied almost entirely on use-offorce data provided to investigators by APD.
None of those studies employed a methodology
that included street outreach and interviews of
the identified groups most frequently victims of
unjustified use-of-force by APD. Instead those
investigations limited interviews to APD officers
and official APD reports. While that approach
provided important information, it missed unreported or underreported use- of-force incidents
and data by Albuquerque police officers. This is
the first study to systematically acquire data by
and about the people routinely victimized by
the Albuquerque police department. And this
investigation shows that the unjustified use-offorce at APD is not only routine, but significantly
underreported. The solutions offered below are
designed to address the problem of unjustified
use-of-force by focusing very specifically on
ways to interrupt APDs ability to underreport
officer misconduct.
_______________________________________

A Native woman described a practice other

respondents described also: APD officers arrest
Native people in one part of town, take them to
another part of town, and then release them. She
said APD officers arrested her friend, drove her
over to Nine Mile Hill and then left her there.
Investigators spoke to a Native man, just blocks
from the Albuquerque Indian Center. You know
Im an alcoholic and I drink on the streets, and
[the police] picked me up and they brought me
all the way down to the Bio Park and they beat
me up, while I was in handcuffs, and then they
unhandcuffed me and let me go.
A homeless Native man reported being arrested for littering after he threw away his cigarette
when officers told him to stop smoking.
Two Native men in their 20s reported being
harassed by a police officer who claimed to be a
military veteran. He tries to represent Marines.
Hes all Oo-Rah. He says he was there, he done
it. And hes like to us, How come you dont go
and fight our war? And we told him, Why are
you living in our world? This is our land. Then
he just started checking IDs. He mostly harasses
drunk people who cant ID him.

Paula Mejia, Why Cops Get Away With Rape, Newsweek, July 9, 2014 http://www.newsweek.com/police-sexual-assault-rape-justice-258130

10

Stinson, et al., Police sexual misconduct: A national

scale study of arrested officers, BGSU Criminal Justice
Faculty Publications, paper 30, 2014. http://scholarworks.
bgsu.edu/crim_just_pub/30
11

Another Native man reported being beaten in

November of 2014. I was walking. The officers
dragged me on the ground and I hit myself on
the sidewalk on my shoulder. I cant tell you who
the officers are. I was just walking. They threw
handcuffs on. I dont know what for.

Candice Bernd, Police Departments Ignore Rampant

Sexual Assault by Officers, Truthout, July 2014,
2014 http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/24677-police-departments-ignore-rampant-sexual-assault-by- officers#
12

PERF, Review of Use of Force in the Albuquerque Police Department, June 23, 2011. https://
d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/apdforward/pages/33/
attachments/original/1406915102/PERF_Rep ort_(2011).
pdf?1406915102

13

Findings Conclusion
The interviews conducted during the course
of this investigation show a pattern of unconstitutional policing at APD. This investigation
confirms many of the conclusions of previous
11

Expectations

This section describes changes in police policies and practices we believe are immediately
necessary to address the problems described in
this report. We use the word expectations in
order to make clear that what we describe below
is not intended as a comprehensive solution to
the problem. The increasingly militarized and
racialized policing of poor communities will not
end overnight. Rather the expectations we describe here are intended to contribute to creating
the conditions necessary for community-based
policing.

from the academy of public safety.14

Accountability
In September of 2014, the Albuquerque City
Council abolished the Police Oversight Commission (POC), which it had created in 1997; it replaced it with a Civilian Police Oversight Agency
(CPOA). Unlike the POC, the new agency will
receive independent legal advice, can exercise
subpoena powers, and will maintain a budget
independent of City administrators. But, as with
the POC, the new agencys authority is limited to
an advisory capacity. It does not have the authority to discipline officers or to force changes to police policies or practices. Our investigation shows
that advisory oversight has failed. Twenty-eight
years of advisory oversight has failed to resolve
the systemic problems at APD.

In the words of scholar Robin D.G. Kelley, community-based policing requires radically new
modes of training. Employees and volunteers
would have to attend intensive workshops on
race, gender, sexuality, domestic abuse, rape,
violence, and inequality, among other things, and
the institutions of public safety would have to reflect the racial and ethnic makeup of the communities they serve and to maintain an equal gender balance in all areas of work. They would be
required to reside in the neighborhood in which
they work and to conduct a thorough study of
that neighborhood in all of its historical, social,
economic, and psychological dimensionsa little
like writing an honors thesis before graduating

EXPECTATION #1 The Mayor of Albuquerque

must submit the Albuquerque Police to meaningful community oversight. This should take
the form of an independent agency charged with
investigating complaints against Albuquerque
police officers, and evaluating police policies and
practices. And this agency must have the authority to discipline officers and make policy changes.
12

EXPECTATION #2 The new Civilian Police

Oversight Agency should hire a team of field investigators to engage in extensive street outreach.
Few of the people interviewed for this investigation filed complaints against APD; many were
unaware there was such a procedure; some didnt
trust the process, others were too frightened to
file a report. Extensive street outreachcollecting complaints rather than passively waiting for
them to be madewould provide data that could
be compared against official APD use-of- force
reports in order to find inconsistencies worth
further investigation, and to resolve the problem
of use-of-force underreporting by APD.

District Attorneys and place that authority in the

hands of special independent prosecutors.
Transparency
The Albuquerque Police Department is among
the least transparent agencies of government
in the state of New Mexico. It routinely violates
the Inspection of Public Records Act statute by
refusing to release pubic information. It recently
has refused to make officer lapel camera videos available to the family of Armand Martin,
who was killed by APD SWAT officers in June
of 2014. None of the violent encounters reported to ABQJustice investigators by interview
subjects were captured on lapel camera videos
or officially reported by officers as required by
police policy. Officers who engage in misconduct do not report themselves. But the policy
changes described in the consent decree rely on
self-reporting to resolve the problem of officer
misconduct. The DOJ requires that APD officers
capture all encounters with individuals on lapel
camera. But the ABQJustice investigation shows
that self-reporting of misconduct by officers who
engage in misconduct will not work. The harassment of homeless people by APD and the racially motived violence committed by its officers
described in this report is possible only because
so much of their work occurs outside of the view
of the public.

EXPECTATION #3 Anonymous complaints

against APD should be allowed. Currently they
are not, because of the perceived due process
problems they could pose for individual officers
and the City. While it is impossible to adjudicate
anonymous complaints, anonymous complaints
would provide important information regarding
patterns of police misconduct. This is invaluable
information for the Police Oversight Board regarding police policies and procedures.
EXPECTATION #4 Our investigation demonstrates that homelessness is a social and political
problem, not a criminal justice issue. The City
of Albuquerque should decriminalize homelessness. This should begin by relieving the Albuquerque Police Department of its responsibility
to police homeless people. The City of Albuquerque should expand efforts to provide social services further develop coordinated social service
programs and provisions for homeless people in
Albuquerque.

EXPECTATION #6 The Albuquerque Police

should publish all officer shift rosters at the end
of each week and make all lapel camera video
from those shifts available online immediately.
The refusal to make police lapel camera videos
quickly and widely available is a transparency
issue, not a technological issue. First-responder
technology with the ability to capture, and even
livestream video from on-duty police officers, is
available and already in use elsewhere.15

EXPECTATION #5 While homelessness is not

a criminal justice issue, police brutality is. Police
officers who use unjustified force must be held
criminally accountable. The City of Albuquerque and the State of New Mexico have refused
to hold officers accountable. The federal government must step in and remove prosecutorial authority regarding officer-involved shootings from

Training and Recruiting

The consent decree between the City of Albuquerque and the Department of Justice identifies
new and extensive improvements to crisis inter13

the use of unjustified force. It continues to hire

and promote officers who lack experience in, or
an inclination for, community-based policing.

vention training for APD officers. The patterns

and practices of unjustified use-of-force revealed
by this investigation, however, shows that it is
not a lack of training that explains unconstitutional policing, but rather a systemic pattern
of racial bias and prejudice. Therefore, training
alone will not resolve the problems described in
this and other reports.

EXPECTATION #8 The Albuquerque Police Department limit promotion to candidates with expertise in crisis intervention, who have advanced
degrees in social service or allied disciplines,
and/or who come to APD from departments
nationally recognized as a leader in community-based policing.
_______________________________________

EXPECTATION #7 The Albuquerque Police

Department should prioritize the recruitment of
candidates who hold degrees in social work and
allied social service fields or who possess professional experience as social workers. In addition,
the department should provide tuition reimbursement and financial incentives for existing
officers to pursue degrees in social work, ethnic
studies, womens and gender studies or peace
studies.

Robin D.G. Kelley, Slangin Rocks... Palestinian

Style: Dispatches from the Occupied Zones of North
America, in Police Brutality: An Anthology, Jill Nelson ed., Norton, 2001, p. 51.

14

See Loraine Burger, Firefighter creates live-streaming body cam with reliable storage solution, v,
October 28, 2014 http://www.policeone.com/police-products/body-cameras/articles/7747819- Firefighter-creates-live-streaming-body-cam-with-reliable-storage-solution/
15

Leadership & Administration

The Albuquerque Police Department continues
to promote officers with troubling histories of

14

Appendix

Statement of Father Francis Quintana

Blessed Oscar Romero Catholic Community

as members of the public who assume officers

wont misbehave too badly.

He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and

After a 16-month investigation of the Albuquerque Police Department, the federal government
reports that its officers routinely violated the
Constitutional rights of residents, unjustly beating them, shocking them with tasers, and even
shooting them dead. Twenty-one fatal shootings
were reviewed. Officers were not justified under
federal law in using deadly force in the majority of those incidents, the report states. Albuquerque police officers shot and killed civilians
who did not pose an imminent threat of serious
bodily harm or death to the officers or others.
This is immoral, not merely a flawed procedural
paradigm! It violates religious and human sensitivities! It is abhorrent and reprehensible by any
faith traditions awareness! May I be so bold as to
say that this is blatantly sinful behavior rooted in
a disregard of human dignity, a sense of justice, a
lack of grace and kind regard for the vulnerable,
the ill or the disturbed. Power run amok with
pride, cruelty, and disdain.

what does the Lord require of you but to do justice,

and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with
your God? (Mic. 6:8, NRSV)
Please do not be offended because Im using the
words of the prophet contained in the Scriptures
to shed light on the social, political and economic situation of our people. But I think this
passage is apropos, given that it points to what
is behind excessive and abusive force found to
be endemic in the Albuquerque Police Department (APD) by the U.S. Department of Justice
(DOJ.) It is a call to justice, kindness, and humility. Qualities of peace officers and not agents of
intimidation, oppressive conduct and fear mongering.
Community standards of morality, given the
present situation, in order to restore civilian
confidence and trust in the APD, police officers
ought to be subject to intense oversight. But the
community has been often overruled by police
chiefs, elected officials, and police unions, as well

Albuquerque police needlessly extinguished

someones life on several occasions. Anyone who
observed the video of James Abba Boyds death
15

do not find it hard to conclude this. One unarmed man was shot through the chest as he lay
motionless on his back. No police officer has yet
to been prosecuted for unlawful killing.

ble, and Id argue immoral, behavior.

The militarization of the police adds yet another dimension to the whole culture of excessive
force, intimidation and suppression. Its as if the
display of military force to the citizenry is a preemptive move to subdue us. This too, is morally
indefensible and antithetical to liberty and peace.

Officers used deadly force against people who

posed a minimal threat, including individuals
who posed a threat only to themselves or who
were unarmed, the report states. Officers also
used deadly force in situations where the conduct of the officers heightened the danger and
contributed to the need to use force.

I would like to make a special appeal to the men

and women of the APD:
Sisters and Brothers, you come from among our
own people. You are killing your own brothers
and sisters! Any human order to kill must be
subordinate to the law of God which says, You
shall not kill. No police officer is obliged to obey
an order contrary to the law of God when use of
non-lethal force or negotiation can resolve the
situation and ensue peace. No one has to submit
to an immoral culture. I call upon you, in the
name of God, to recover your consciences and
obey your consciences. Practice justice, do kindness, be humble and empathetic among those
you have been called to serve and protect.

The police department abused its power in

non-lethal situations too.
Albuquerque police officers often use unreasonable physical force without regard for the subjects safety or the level of threat encountered,
the report concluded after reviewing more than
200 use of force incidents.
Victims were often mentally ill people. Regardless of the victim, supervisors looked the other
way.
The use of excessive force by APD officers was
not found to be isolated or sporadic. The pattern
or practice of excessive force stems from systemic deficiencies in oversight, training, and policy.
But also, seemingly in a severe moral defect of
culture and character of the APD. Reparation
and reform calls for force incidents being properly investigated, documented, or addressed with
corrective measures.

The church, the defender of the rights of Gods

people, the teacher of the law of God, the promoter of human dignity, of the person, cannot
remain silent before such immoral practice. May
the government face the fact that reforms are
needed that repentance is called for. In the name
of God, in the name of the suffering people of
color, the poor, the homeless, LGBTQ, women,
the vulnerable, the mentally ill, whose cries rise
to the ears of the Almighty more loudly each day,
I implore you, I beg you, I demand in the name
of God: stop the injustice.

Superiors must not whitewash misconduct. That

is dishonest.
It might be said that the situation in Albuquerque illustrates how thoroughly police officers can
be corrupted by the power given them, absent
proper oversight, sound policies, and a culture
of reform. The officers in Albuquerque are potentially no worse by nature than officers in any
other city. Yet we have seen all sorts of indefensi-

The church preaches your liberation,too. It is

a liberation that has, above all else, respect for
the dignity of the person, hope for humanitys
common good, and the transcendence that looks
before all to God and only from God derives its
hope and its strength.
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