APD Chief Harold Medina is calling upon the 2025 New Mexico legislature to create and assemble a new, separate task force that would be placed in charge of investigating all police officer-involved shootings statewide. The task force would be a third-party group with no connection to any law enforcement agency in New Mexico.
In 2024, there were13 APD officer-involved shootings which is down from the 18 that happened in 2022. In New Mexico statewide, it is estimated there are 50 officer-involved shootings a year. In Albuquerque, whenever there is an APD Police Officer involved shooting, the shooting is investigated by a multi-agency task force. The current task force lets APD, despite having a police officer involved in the shooting, oversee the investigation with assistance from at least one other agency.
A recent APD Police Officer involved shooting had people asking more questions, even after department leaders laid out what they discovered led to it. That’s one of the reasons why APD Chief Harold Medina no longer wants his department officers’ investigating shootings by those within their own ranks. Medina said this:
“There are individuals who won’t actually believe our investigation because they’ve heard this misinformation.”
Medina believes the task force would help build trust with people and law enforcement and is vital in ensuring transparency. The proposal for the creation of a separate task by the New Mexico legislature is part of what is known as the Metro Crime Initiative which is a listing of 50 major priorities that the city wants the 2025 Legislature to enact. The postscript to this article provides a related blog article entitled “Identifying Mayor Keller’s Failing Metro Crime Initiatives (MCI); After Over 3 Years, 5 Action Items Completed, 3 Partially Addressed; 42 Items Remain Of MCI’s 50 Legislative Agenda Priorities; 2025 NM Legislature Will Likely Refuse To Enact MCI Recommendations Ignoring Keller”
APD Police Chief Harold Medina said this about the creation of a separate task force:
“We have a great process in Albuquerque. And for me, taking the next step to make it even better is putting it into the hands of an independent entity. … It would really be able to reduce the caseload down to a level that doesn’t impact us as much. … I think [a separate task force is] an important step forward for us to make sure the public has faith and trust in the processes,”
Medina said lawmakers and organizations are in support of the idea and he said this:
“They’re very interested in it. … And I’ve actually even spoken to the ACLU about it. And the ACLU seems to support the concept.”
Medina says New Mexico State Police end up taking on a lot of policed officer involved investigations. Medina said this:
“I would suppose that it’s a huge burden, them having to go across the state and conduct these high profile investigations. … [ The new task force would free up APD resources] I currently probably have about three to four at any time who are just doing officer involved shootings for the year. If I could clear those officers up to work on other types of criminal cases, I could start a new unit, a white collar unit.”
Medina says he doesn’t know who would make up the task force, but he wants the state to do a study to identify the best way to move forward. But he has some ideas and said this:
“An in house prosecutor would be a vital part of this team. Somebody that could look and give advice on different aspects of the shooting. … By having this, it takes out that whole argument that cops are investigating cops.”
https://www.kob.com/new-mexico/apd-chief-wants-new-task-force-to-investigate-police-shootings/
APD RANKED #1 IN CIVILIAN KILLINGS OUT OF THE 50 LARGEST CITY POLICE DEPARTMENTS IN THE COUNTRY
On April 10, 2024 the on line news publication Searchlight New Mexico published a remarkable story researched and written by its staff reporter Josh Bowling. The article is entitled “Can the Albuquerque Police Department ever be reformed?” The article goes into great detail explaining the Court Approved Settlement Agreement, what has been done to reform APD and the role of the Federal Monitor. The link to read the full, unedited Searchlight New Mexico article with photos and graphs is here:
The Search Light New Mexico article reported that in 2014, the Albuquerque Police Department killed 10.6 people per million residents, more than any other sizable police department in the nation, according to data tracked by the national nonprofit Mapping Police Violence.
Following are the relevant excerpts from the Search Light New Mexico article
In 2022, the department set a record for police shootings with 18, 10 of which were fatal. That year, a Searchlight analysis found, only the police departments in Los Angeles, New York and Houston killed more people than APD.
Law enforcement officials, including police leaders and district attorneys, say such figures are nuanced. They point to the acute dearth of mental health resources in New Mexico and, anecdotally, stories of people who draw guns on police officers as explanations for why the problem of police violence is so outsized locally.”
…
“In the past four years, Albuquerque police repeatedly shot people who were suffering visible mental health crises. They shot 26-year-old Max Mitnik in the head during a “schizoaffective episode” in which he asked officers to fire their weapons at him; they shot and killed 52-year-old Valente Acosta-Bustillos who swung a shovel at officers and told them to shoot him; they shot and killed 33-year-old Collin Neztsosie while he was on his cell phone, pleading for help with a 911 dispatcher.
These grim numbers have led reform advocates, critics and law enforcement leaders themselves to question what it means to be “in compliance.”
“You can improve things on paper or comply with the terms of a consent decree and still have these things happening. … Albuquerque is a prime place to be asking the questions…about what impact consent decrees have. The city should be ground zero for the national conversation on police reform” said UCLA law professor Joanna Schwartz, author of the 2023 book “Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable.”
This is not to say that the consent decree has been without merit. The 2014 Court-Approved Settlement Agreement between the DOJ and Albuquerque laid out nearly 300 mandated reforms. Since its launch, APD has fulfilled hundreds of reform requirements, including overhauling scores of policies and training procedures.”
The Search Light New Mexico article contains a horizontal graph listing the 50 largest cities in the United States. According to the graph, among the 50 largest cities, Albuquerque Police killed people at the highest rate than all the other city police departments in 2023 at the rate of 10.6 per 1 Million population. It is worth comparing Albuquerque’s 10.6 kill rate to the largest cities in the surrounding border states of Texas, Colorado, Arizona and also including Oklahoma and Nevada:
- Albuquerque, NM: 10.6
- San Antonio, Texas: 9.8
- Phoenix, Arizona: 8.7
- Austin, Texas: 7.3
- Denver, Colorado: 5.6
- Tucson, Arizona: 5.5
- Fort Worth, Texas: 5.4
- Houston, Texas: 5.2
- Colorado Springs, Colorado: 4.2
- Dallas, Texas: 3.1
- El Paso, Texas: 2.9
- Las Vegas, Nevada: 2.6
- Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: 2.0
COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS
For the past 10 years, APD has been operating under a Court Approved Settlement Agreement mandating 271 reforms after a Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation found that APD had engaged in a pattern of “excessive use of force” and “deadly force” and finding a “culture of aggression.”
Over the past 10 years, the city has spent millions on reform efforts, has created and staffed new divisions to hold APD officers accountable, rewrote use of force policies and procedures and trained APD officers in constitutional policing practices. The reform has been accomplished under the watchful eye of the federal court and an appointed Federal Independent Monitor.
On June 4, a federal court hearing was held on the 19th Federal Independent Monitor’s Report and APD’s progress in implementing the mandated reforms of the CASA. The federal monitor reported that APD has reached 100% primary compliance, 100% secondary compliance and 96% operational compliance of the 271 reforms mandated by the settlement.
Despite the improvement and gains made by APD in the implementation of the reforms, APD police officer shootings and the killing of civilians is occurring at a “deeply troubling” rate. In terms of overall shootings, both fatal and non-fatal, law enforcement officers in Albuquerque and surrounding Bernalillo County shot 131 people between 2013 and 2022.
As reported above, the national nonprofit Mapping Police Violence reported that last year, APD killed 10.6 people per million residents, which is more than any police department of comparable size in the nation. APD was ranked No. 1 in police officers killing civilians in a listing of 50 largest cities in the United States.
During the June 4 status conference hearing on the Court Approved Settlement, Federal Judge James Browning asked how APD can be in compliance with the DOJ settlement given that the level of police shootings is “at the same level as it was when you started this process. We are still having, I would say, troubling police shootings.”
DOJ attorneys responded saying police are being held accountable and with training and de-escalation skills, police officers are using constitutional policing practices handling lethal encounters. A cynic would say if you are killed by APD while you commit a crime, at least APD followed constitutional policing practices.
The CASA was not designed to guarantee or completely stop nor prevent police officer shootings. It was designed to implement constitutional policing practices, especially when dealing with the mentally ill. There never was a guarantee that police officer shootings would go down or simply never occur even with the reforms.
What the CASA reforms ensure is that police officers are being held accountable when they violate constitutional policing practices and people’s civil rights. All that really can be done is to train and implement constitutional policing practices in the hopes that it will bring down police officer shootings of civilians.
MEDINA MORE CONCERNED ABOUT DEDICATED RESOURCES TO INVESTIGATE NOT REDUCE POLICE SHOOTINGS
It should come as absolutely no surprise that APD Chief Harold Medina supports the 2025 New Mexico legislature creating an independent task force to investigate all police officer-involved shootings statewide. APD is ranked #1 in civilian killings out of the 50 largest city police departments in the country. The tragic reality is that APD alone could keep such a task force occupied all year long. The task force would spare APD from dedicating resources and personnel to investigate their own department shootings.
Simply put, APD shootings of civilians is at unacceptable levels. Medina saying “an independent entity. … would really be able to reduce the caseload down to a level that doesn’t impact us as much” is evidence that Chief Medina is more interested in the extent of APD personnel dedicated to investigating police shootings and not at all interested in initiating reforms to reduce APD officers killing civilians. Medina is more interested in saving personnel resources than saving lives by getting to the bottom of why there are so many APD Police Officer involved shootings.