A few weeks in the past, Jose Vasquez realized that former Albuquerque police officer Honorio Alba Jr. had pleaded responsible to taking bribes from an area protection lawyer in trade for making DWI instances disappear. “I virtually fell out of my mattress as a result of I used to be watching the information that day, and I simply, I could not consider it,” Vasquez informed KRQE, the CBS affiliate in Albuquerque. “I used to be like, there it’s. That is it. It did need to do with cash.”
Alexander M.M. Uballez, the U.S. lawyer for New Mexico, says Alba was simply one in every of “many officers” who participated in a bribery scheme that started a long time in the past and finally concerned practically each cop assigned to the Albuquerque Police Division (APD) unit charged with apprehending drunk drivers. For Vasquez, one in every of 14 plaintiffs in a latest lawsuit provoked by the corruption scandal, the information of Alba’s responsible plea definitively solved a thriller that started greater than 4 years in the past.
On a Sunday in September 2020, Alba stopped Vasquez for dashing on Paseo Del Norte Highway in northeast Albuquerque. However as a substitute of merely writing him a ticket, Alba alleged that Vasquez was driving whereas intoxicated. Vasquez was dismayed by the accusation, since he had not been ingesting and actually had given up alcohol for well being causes.
Alba claimed he may scent alcohol on Vasquez’s breath, which was additionally unusual, as a result of each males had been carrying face masks as a precaution in opposition to COVID-19. “I knew that I hadn’t been ingesting,” Vasquez informed KRQE. “And I used to be like, ‘I’ve a masks on. How are you going to scent? You’ve got a masks on, like what? How are you going to be smelling the scent of alcohol?'”
Sensing that one thing was amiss, Vasquez’s spouse started recording the encounter on her cellphone. “Do I appear to be a drunk particular person?” Vasquez requested Alba and Sgt. Nelson Ortiz, one other officer who would later be implicated within the corruption scandal. “You may all inform he is not,” his spouse added. However after Vasquez refused to bear discipline sobriety checks, Alba and Ortiz arrested him. And though a breath check confirmed that Vasquez was not beneath the affect, they charged him with DWI, together with dashing, obstructing or evading an officer, and negligent use of a lethal weapon.
Compounding the puzzle, the officers suggested Vasquez to contact Thomas Clear, a lawyer they mentioned may organize for the fees to be dismissed. Vasquez employed a unique lawyer, and in 2021 a decide discovered him not responsible of all costs apart from dashing.
Carlos Sandoval-Smith had an analogous run-in with Officer Daniel Montaño in June 2023. Based on a lawsuit that Sandoval-Smith filed final October, Montaño stopped him for dashing, then “unlawfully expanded the scope of the cease by initiating a DUI investigation with out cheap suspicion that [Sandoval-Smith] was driving beneath the affect.” Montaño charged Sandoval-Smith with DWI though he “carried out very nicely” on discipline sobriety checks and a breath check put his blood alcohol focus nicely under the authorized restrict. Like Alba, Montaño really helpful Clear as a lawyer who may get DWI costs dismissed.
The motivation for these unusual encounters grew to become clear after the federal corruption investigation grew to become public in January 2024, when the FBI searched Clear’s workplace and the properties of a number of officers. Final month, Clear’s investigator, Ricardo Mendez, pleaded responsible to federal bribery, extortion, and racketeering costs. Montaño and Alba pleaded responsible to comparable costs on February 7, adopted by Clear himself final week.
“Since at the least the late Nineties,” Clear mentioned in his plea settlement, he had been operating what prosecutors name the “DWI Enterprise,” a scheme that concerned “virtually all the APD DWI unit over a prolonged time frame.” In trade for money, “discounted authorized companies, present playing cards, resort rooms, and different presents,” officers would both chorus from submitting costs in opposition to DWI suspects or intentionally miss pretrial interviews, movement hearings, trials, or administrative driver’s license hearings. Based mostly on these prearranged absences, Clear would transfer for dismissal, permitting his purchasers to keep away from prosecution and preserve their licenses.
The lawsuit that Vasquez joined, which goals to signify folks victimized by the “DWI Enterprise” as a category, describes how all of this labored from the angle of drivers who had been pulled over by Alba and his colleagues. The plaintiffs embrace three different drivers who declined to rent Clear, all of whom say they had been arrested for DWI with out possible trigger.
In August 2023, for instance, Pedro Gonzales ran out of fuel whereas driving from Socorro, New Mexico, to his residence in Albuquqerque. Montaño stopped and approached Gonzales, who mentioned he had drunk “two beers” in Socorro. Unhappy by Gonzales’ efficiency on roadside sobriety checks, Montaño arrested him for DWI. However in response to the criticism, Montaño “by no means deliberate on really prosecuting” Gonzales. As a substitute, Montaño took Gonzales residence, retained his driver’s license, and gave it to Mendez, who referred to as Gonzales the subsequent day.
For $8,000 up entrance or $10,000 later, Mendez mentioned, Gonzales would get his license again and his case can be dismissed. Gonzales “determined to tell federal legislation enforcement of the extortion.” His DWI cost was in the end dismissed in January 2024, across the time that information of the FBI investigation broke.
The opposite named plaintiffs inform comparable tales. Officers would retain their licenses or different private results and provides them to Mendez as an incentive to rent Clear. Mendez would provide Clear’s assist in trade for a money charge of $6,000 to $10,000. Whereas these drivers all turned Mendez down, the plaintiffs additionally embrace 10 unnamed people who accepted his provide.
Clear and Mendez saved the racket going with the assistance of senior APD officers, who recruited new individuals and agreed to be sure that nobody interfered with the “DWI Enterprise.” As they moved up within the ranks, former members of the DWI unit—together with the commander of the division’s inside affairs division, his deputy, a lieutenant who likewise was purported to be rooting out abuse and corruption, and two different lieutenants—had been able to ship on that promise.
The lawsuit, which alleges a number of violations of state and federal legislation, argues that none of this might have occurred if town had correctly skilled and supervised its officers. Along with town, the defendants embrace Clear, Mendez, Alba, 13 different present or former cops, and Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina. The lawsuit additionally names the Bernalillo County Board of Supervisors and the New Mexico Division of Public Security as a result of Clear and Mendez have mentioned they bribed staff of the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Workplace and the New Mexico State Police in addition to the APD.
“On info and perception,” the criticism says, town and Medina “knew of the settlement between Defendant Officers and Defendants Clear and Mendez.” It’s not clear whether or not that’s true. However it’s honest to say that Medina ought to have recognized what was happening. He joined the APD in 1995, shortly earlier than Clear says the “DWI Enterprise” obtained began. Medina has held senior positions for greater than a decade and has run or helped run the division since 2017. As chief, he assigned former DWI officers to inside affairs, placing foxes answerable for the henhouse.
Based on the lawsuit, the APD’s Courtroom Companies Unit was supposed to maintain monitor of officers’ appearances at legal and administrative proceedings however manifestly failed to take action. It says town and Medina “ratified the conduct of Defendant Officers by failing to intervene after receiving a number of notices that Defendant Officers had been violating the legislation.” In December 2022, for instance, the APDÂ obtained a tip that DWI officers, together with Alba, had been getting paid to be sure that instances had been dismissed.
The truth that a number of drivers reported their disturbing encounters with cops and Mendez to the FBI fairly than the APD suggests they didn’t belief native authorities to look into the scenario. With good motive, says the lawsuit, which alleges that Medina “didn’t adequately examine” proof of irregularities till an FBI probe pressured him to take action. Based on Medina, who has repeatedly promised to “be sure that we resolve this,” he had no clue that something was amiss till he was briefed on the FBI investigation in October 2023.
The town and Medina have declined to touch upon the lawsuit. However it raises severe questions in regards to the insurance policies and practices that allowed such pervasive corruption to go unnoticed for so long as it did.
“The way in which that town has responded to this point is kind of taking a victory lap, saying we stopped it, however not saying why it occurred,” Taylor Smith, one of many attorneys who filed the lawsuit, informed KRQE. “And that is the issue. And if our personal management will not be keen to take accountability and be sure that the change occurs, then we want new management.”
