From 2008 via 2023, federal prosecutors in New Mexico say, Albuquerque cops conspired with a neighborhood protection legal professional, Thomas Clear, and his investigator, Ricardo Mendez, to make DWI instances disappear in trade for bribes. Mendez pleaded responsible on Friday to eight federal expenses in reference to the long-running scheme, which prosecutors say primarily concerned officers assigned to the Albuquerque Police Division’s DWI unit but additionally included staff of the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Workplace (BCSO) and the New Mexico State Police (NMSP).
The main points of this huge corruption scandal have been slowly rising since January 2024, when FBI brokers searched Clear’s workplace. The federal investigation of the Albuquerque Police Division (APD), which additionally concerned searches of officers’ houses, resulted within the dismissal of some 200 DWI instances and an inside probe. Up to now, the Santa Fe New Mexican stories, “no less than a dozen Albuquerque cops have been positioned on go away,” and plenty of of them have dodged interviews with inside investigators by resigning. However Mendez’s responsible plea is the primary public affirmation of legal expenses within the case, and it reveals extra intensive corruption than the preliminary press stories recommended.
In line with the expenses towards Mendez, which embody racketeering, bribery, and “interference with commerce by extortion,” he and his boss, Clear, had a mutually useful association with Albuquerque cops who specialised in nabbing drunk drivers. The officers would generate enterprise for Clear by referring arrestees to his workplace. These shoppers, who usually paid Clear in money, have been amazed and delighted at his capacity to make their instances go away, sparing them prosecution and revocation of their driver’s licenses. However federal prosecutors say that spectacular monitor report was not as a consequence of Clear’s authorized expertise a lot as his payoffs to the cops, who conveniently failed to indicate up at pretrial interviews or court docket hearings, permitting the aptly named Clear to hunt dismissal of the costs on the grounds that the essential witnesses towards his shoppers have been absent.
Initially, these no-shows concerned pretrial interviews (PTIs) of witnesses that defendants have been entitled to rearrange. After March 24, 2022, when the New Mexico Supreme Courtroom suspended PTIs for instances filed in Bernalillo County Municipal Courtroom, the must-miss occasions have been movement hearings and trials. As a reward for his or her poor attendance report, prosecutors say, officers “have been usually paid in money however, at instances, additionally acquired different advantages and issues of worth,” together with “free authorized providers, present playing cards, lodge rooms, and different presents.”
In line with prosecutors, Albuquerque officers generally would, opposite to division coverage, chorus from charging DWI suspects and as a substitute present their contact info or their driver’s licenses to Mendez. These drivers “have been requested to pay a number of thousand {dollars} in U.S. forex in trade for the APD officer not submitting expenses towards the DWI Offenders.”
To protect and broaden this “DWI Enterprise,” prosecutors say, Albuquerque officers “who had labored within the DWI unit and have been a part of the scheme helped recruit and prepare
the subsequent technology” of corrupt cops. The extra skilled officers would introduce the recruits to Mendez and provides him their cellular phone numbers, which “lately” earned them a “referral charge.” Additionally they helped Mendez by telling him “which officers the DWI Enterprise ought to keep away from”—”that means which officers have been more likely to report the DWI Enterprise’s legal exercise to inside affairs or different regulation enforcement authorities.”
When assembly with a brand new recruit, Mendez “usually mentioned lots of the different Officers Members who had been and have been a part of the DWI Enterprise from the totally different regulation enforcement companies (APD, NMSP, and BCSO),” which “allowed the recruit to really feel extra snug becoming a member of the DWI Enterprise due to the variety of senior, and infrequently high-ranking, officers” who have been already concerned in it, prosecutors say. “This generational participation, significantly inside APD, allowed the DWI Enterprise to take root amongst virtually the whole APD DWI unit over a prolonged time period.”
That description confirms what Joshua Montaño, one of many Albuquerque officers who was positioned on administrative go away, stated when he resigned in March 2024. “The problems I let myself get caught up in throughout the DWI Unit have been generational,” he wrote in a letter to Police Reform Superintendent Eric Garcia. Montaño complained that he had been made “the Metropolis’s scapegoat for its personal failures” and that Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina “has made it seem to be there are only a few dangerous officers appearing on their very own,” which was “removed from the reality.”
Medina had promised to “make it possible for we unravel this,” a dedication that he reiterated on Friday. “As I’ve stated many instances over the previous yr, we’ll go away no stone unturned in terms of exposing this conspiracy,” he stated. “We’ve totally cooperated with the FBI’s investigation, whereas aggressively pursuing our personal inside investigation that produced rapid outcomes and helped us establish modifications we wanted to make to make sure accountability throughout the division. Via our investigation, we imagine this conspiracy goes again so far as 20 years, which the U.S. Legal professional indicated in its plea settlement as we speak. It’s disappointing on so many ranges as a result of it seems cops from a number of companies conspired with no less than two legal professionals and a paralegal to control the legal justice system, on the expense of victims of DWI.”
Medina’s dedication to transparency appears uncertain in mild of his personal private scandal. Final February, he ran a pink mild and slammed his department-issued pickup truck into the facet of a sports activities automotive, severely injuring the motive force. Medina, who stated he was fleeing from a battle between two homeless males that had escalated into gunfire, blamed “gun violence” for his reckless driving, which finally resulted in two official reprimands. A type of reprimands concerned working his truck “in an unsafe method.” The opposite concerned his failure to activate his physique digicam, as required by division coverage and state regulation, whereas he was speaking to witnesses after the crash.
Medina bizarrely defended that call by claiming “spousal privilege,” saying the digicam might need recorded his exchanges together with his spouse, who was driving with him within the truck. Extra alarmingly, he claimed he had a Fifth Modification proper to keep away from incriminating himself by recording his interactions with the general public—a place that will give cops a license to maintain their cameras off in any scenario the place their conduct would possibly look dangerous. For sure, that authorized idea is inconsistent with the primary rationale for requiring physique cameras within the first place.
Medina’s credibility can be open to query in mild of his avowed obliviousness to what was taking place within the DWI unit. Medina, who started working for the APD in 1995, was an APD officer for 20 years earlier than retiring as a commander in 2014, six years after prosecutors say the “DWI Enterprise” acquired began. After just a few years as police chief of Laguna, New Mexico, Medina returned to the APD as deputy chief in December 2017. Three years later, he turned interim chief, a place that was made everlasting in March 2021. All informed, Medina’s tenure on the APD overlapped with the DWI unit’s corruption for greater than a decade. But he apparently had no clue about it till the FBI briefed him on its investigation.
Worse, the APD acquired a tip concerning the bribery scheme in December 2022. The tipster particularly talked about Honorio Alba, one of many officers who would later resign amid the corruption scandal. An inside investigation by Performing Sgt. Jon O’Guin discovered no proof to substantiate the tip. If O’Guin had regarded extra carefully at DWI instances, he might need seen the identical curious sample of dismissals that federal prosecutors described final week.
Prosecutors say the APD was the primary locus of corruption. However the federal investigation additionally implicated the sheriff’s workplace and the state police.
“Upon studying of the involvement of BCSO personnel, the deputy in query”—Jeff Hammerel—”was instantly positioned on administrative go away final evening,” BCSO spokeswoman Jayme Fuller-Gonzales stated on Friday. “Sheriff [John] Allen has constantly demonstrated zero tolerance for misconduct, significantly corruption, and stays dedicated to upholding the very best requirements of integrity throughout the Sheriff’s Workplace.”
The NMSP, in contrast, nonetheless appears uncertain why it was talked about within the expenses towards Mendez. “Presently, we shouldn’t have info to imagine any of our officers have been concerned on this legal conduct,” NMSP spokesman Ricardo Brecedo stated on Friday. “The New Mexico State Police has been and can proceed to cooperate with investigators.”
