Editorial: Video Shows Challenge For APD Training Boss

A June 20 video that captured unprofessional and cruelly insensitive — at best, chilling at worst — comments by two Albuquerque Police Department SWAT team members during a fatal standoff once again demonstrates why the department needs a major attitude adjustment.

The latest move to bring about that kind of change is the hiring of a new APD Academy director, an outsider with experience training federal agents. And that move, and the man selected, offer hope that improvements are on the horizon.

The video is the latest glimpse at the cultural problem within APD. Police say Santiago Chavez, who barricaded himself inside a home in Southwest Albuquerque on June 20, killed himself after a 15-hour standoff.

A police lapel camera picked up officers complaining about laws and APD policies governing the use of force. One officer smiles while speculating that the situation is escalating, and a sergeant at least twice says he feels “threatened” — one of the factors that permits an escalation in the use of force.

Officers are also recorded using expletives referring to female anatomy and speaking in a mocking falsetto tone.

Chief Ray Schultz calls the comments “boy talk” and says while some were inappropriate, they don’t reflect a larger problem.

A lawyer for the family disagrees. Refreshingly, APD’s new Police Academy Director Joe Wolf labeled the comments as “indefensible.”

Wolf comes on board as APD is under fire for excessive force cases, the payouts of millions of dollars to settle misconduct cases and calls for a U.S. Justice Department investigation over police shootings.

At the top of Wolf’s to-do list is instilling less of a paramilitary mentality in new recruits and attempting to convince current officers that “tactically it makes sense to soften (their) approach.”

That’s his directive from Mayor Richard Berry and Schultz, who correctly identifies community trust as the major issue facing local law enforcement today not only in Albuquerque but throughout the United States.

Wolf will work to develop a new crop of police officers who treat the public they encounter and taxpayers with respect, as they do their difficult and dangerous jobs.

But much work will still be needed by the chief and other top-level supervisors. That group of police officers who have tarnished the department’s reputation — and their line supervisors — need to understand that such an us-and-them attitude is no longer tolerated by APD.

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.