NM ACLU Reacts to Police Shooting Grand Jury Process

Peter Simonson, executive director of the New Mexico affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, has issued a statement in response to the way Bernalillo County prosecutors present police shooting cases to “investigative grand juries.”

A story in Sunday’s Journal detailed the process after the newspaper got an unprecedented look at one of the cases following a request under the Inspection of Public Records Act. Read it here.

Simonson’s statement:

“I was not aware of the inner workings of the grand jury process for
officer-involved shootings. Like most people, I assumed that the process
was objective, with evidence presented on both sides of the matter and
with findings based on a balanced assessment of the facts.

This suggests that the DA has immense influence over the outcome of the
grand jury’s deliberations and, indeed, that the grand jury system may
be used as a way to sanction officers’ use of deadly force and to
deflect public criticism. I think there is already a perception in the
community that District Attorneys are in alliance with police officers.
These revelations only add to that perception. I can say that the ACLU
will certainly view future grand jury rulings on officer-involved
shootings with a dose of skepticism.

These proceedings should be made absolutely transparent. If a grand jury
is going to have the final word on a matter as important to the
community as an officer-involved shooting, then the public should have
access to the way the facts were presented and the instructions the
grand jury received in order to reach its determination. Anything short
of that begins to make the process look like a cover up. Whether it
actually is a cover up or not is perhaps not as important as the
perception it creates and the effect of that perception on the public’s
confidence in our justice system.

I have to wonder how the public’s outrage about recent problems in APD
has been diffused by the constant rejoinder that a grand jury passed
muster on the latest shooting. If those proceedings really weren’t
objective assessments about the shootings, then the grand juries were
simply a tool for relieving the pressure to reform APD.”