On a Sunday night final June, Albuquerque police officer Joshua Montaño pulled Carlos Smith over for dashing close to the intersection of Central Avenue and Interstate 21. Smith was contrite. “I apologize,” he says in a physique digital camera video. “I was just trying to get over in the lane and get on the freeway. My bad.”
Smith bought greater than a dashing ticket. He was arrested for driving whereas intoxicated (DWI), though two breath exams indicated that his blood alcohol focus was beneath 0.08 p.c, the per se cutoff for that cost. Then issues bought weirder.
The story of what occurred subsequent is only one aspect of an ongoing corruption scandal on the Albuquerque Police Division (APD). Allegations that cops helped DWI defendants keep away from conviction in alternate for payoffs have resulted within the dismissal of some 200 DWI instances, an inside probe, administrative depart for Montaño and 4 different officers, an FBI investigation, and the execution of search warrants at cops’ houses and the workplace of a neighborhood protection legal professional.
Montaño, who had eliminated Smith’s Apple Watch and a bracelet in the course of the June 25 visitors cease, left a voicemail message for Smith the following day. “Some of your jewelry was missing from the property from Sunday evening,” the officer says in a recording that Smith gave KRQE, the CBS affiliate in Albuquerque. “It looks like the PTC [Prisoner Transport Center] officers didn’t put that in your bag, but I have it.”
In a subsequent phone dialog, Smith instructed KRQE, Montaño stated he may retrieve his bracelet from Thomas Clear, an Albuquerque legal professional who makes a speciality of DWI instances. Over the last six years, KRQE discovered, Montaño “was named as the officer in at least 36 cases” wherein the defendants have been represented by Clear, and “nearly 90% of those cases ended in dismissals.”
Involved about Montaño’s uncommon directions, Smith did as he was instructed however recorded the dialog he had with Clear’s paralegal, Rick Mendez, on the legal professional’s workplace. If Smith determined to rent Clear, Mendez stated, “we charge $8,500,” and “you could do it in payments.” He conceded that “we’re not the cheapest.” But when Smith settled for a public defender, Mendez warned, the result of his case can be a “roll of the dice.”
Smith wished to know what he may count on in alternate for Clear’s steep charge. “With you representing me, that would guarantee that this doesn’t go on my record?” he requested. “Yes,” Mendez replied.
That promise was a crimson flag, Leon Howard, the deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, instructed KRQE. “That violates our professional code of conduct,” he stated. “You do not guarantee outcomes.”
Howard is planning a lawsuit that he stated would make clear the corruption that the APD and the FBI are investigating. “It’s shocking and quite frankly disgusting,” he stated. “This scheme perpetuates a narrative that outcomes can be bought and sold. It undermines our entire justice system.”
Smith took a three-part subject sobriety check previous to his arrest, and Montaño ostensibly was unhappy by the outcomes. Nevertheless it’s not clear why. Whereas the horizontal gaze nystagmus check (which entails visually monitoring a transferring object) is a dependable measure of intoxication, efficiency on the walk-and-turn check and the one-leg stand check varies broadly even for sober drivers. The truth that breath exams put Smith’s blood alcohol degree beneath 0.08 p.c, coupled with the truth that prosecutors finally dropped the DWI cost, suggests the arrest was not justified.
“It was the most traumatic experience I’ve ever had in my entire life,” Smith instructed KRQE. “I was lost and super confused. I didn’t know what to do. So I had no choice but to proceed and do what he asked….I can’t understand how a person can abuse their power that way.” He stated the DWI arrest “ruined relationships with his family members and led to him losing his job.”
Different DWI instances that will have been compromised by corruption concerned defendants much less sympathetic than Smith. Early within the morning on August 24, the Albuquerque Journal experiences, Officer Honorio Alba Jr. pulled over a black Toyota sedan that had been “speeding south on Interstate 25 without its headlights on,” going 83 miles per hour in a 55-mph zone. Alba later reported that the Toyota “nearly struck another car” whereas altering lanes. After the automobile left the freeway, it drove onto a sidewalk.
Alba stated the motive force, Antonio Barron, had bloodshot eyes and smelled of alcohol. Barron refused to take a breath check. However as a substitute of arresting Barron, Alba put him “in contact with a specific attorney, possibly named ‘Rick,’ who if hired, would ensure that no court case would be filed,” 2nd Judicial District Court docket Govt Officer Katina Watson reported in a November 3 letter to Albuquerque’s Civilian Police Oversight Company. Watson, who apparently discovered concerning the case as a result of Barron was a former court docket worker, was alerting the company to “questionable conduct” by Alba. Watson’s letter, the Journal experiences, triggered an inside APD investigation.
“Records show Alba didn’t file charges against Barron until 10 weeks after pulling him over,” the paper says. “Arresting officers typically file criminal complaints and a citation within a day of making a DUI arrest.” The cost in opposition to Barron, which got here eight days after Watson’s letter, “was filed in an unorthodox way, via a one-page DWI citation with the word ‘summons’ at the bottom.”
Barron’s case is one in every of almost 200 that prosecutors have dropped as a result of they may not belief the testimony of the arresting officers. “It makes me sick to my stomach,” Bernalillo County District Lawyer Sam Bregman instructed KRQE, “but I have no choice. My prosecutorial ethics require me to dismiss these cases.”
Along with Montaño and Alba, three different members of the APD’s DWI unit—Officer Harvey Johnson Jr., Officer Nelson Ortiz, and Lt. Justin Hunt—have been positioned on administrative depart pending the result of the interior investigation. “APD has been working with the FBI for the past several months on an investigation involving members of the department,” an APD spokesman revealed final month. “Due to the sensitive nature of the investigation, some officers have been placed on administrative leave, and others will be temporarily reassigned within the department. APD leadership is working closely with the FBI to ensure a complete and thorough investigation can be completed.”
As a part of the FBI investigation, the Related Press reported this month, “search warrants were recently served at the homes of officers who had worked with the DWI unit.” KRQE notes that Clear’s workplace was “raided by federal agents last month.”
Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina spoke in generalities concerning the investigations at a press convention on February 2. He famous that DWI instances usually are dismissed when officers are unavailable to testify, an consequence that protection attorneys could make extra possible by in search of trial delays. “Systems that struggle, systems that have loopholes, are really open to corruption,” Medina stated. “We’re dealing with stuff that we anticipate started decades ago, and we’ve done a lot of things that have got us to this point. But we will continue to dig and look and leave no stone unturned and make sure that we get to the bottom of this.”
