Editorial: DOJ Probe Could Make a Better APD

It’s official. The U.S. Department of Justice will investigate the Albuquerque Police Department.

After 15 months of preliminary review, the DOJ says it will try to determine whether there is an entrenched culture that has given rise to a pattern or practice of violating people’s civil rights through use of excessive force. The decision follows a years-long string of police-involved shootings, excessive force and other instances of misconduct and disrespect for the citizens it serves. The city’s tab to settle police misconduct cases is more than $30 million in the last decade.

Heading up the top-to-bottom investigation is Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas Perez, a veteran of dozens of police investigations, who pledges to “peel the onion.”

The investigation will examine the department as a whole, not individual cases of alleged officer misconduct, although several federal criminal investigations into individual cases are ongoing.

As Perez puts it, unconstitutional use of force is, in a way, a symptom of something deeper. The focus will include policies, “accountability mechanisms” (whether what happens on the street matches policy), consistency of discipline, how internal investigations are conducted and training.

The city pledged to cooperate with the DOJ even before the formal announcement, but Chief Ray Schultz and Mayor Richard J. Berry have consistently questioned the need and pointed to a raft of reforms and policies already implemented — including tougher standards for new officers, lapel camera videos to record interactions with the public, changing the director of the police academy to a civilian and adopting some changes the Justice Department has recommended in other cities.

The feds have the authority to launch such sweeping investigations after laws passed in the wake of the infamous 1991 Rodney King beating and subsequent riots. Among the first to be investigated was the Los Angeles Police Department. Over the years other high-profile investigations also led to court-enforceable consent degrees in New Orleans, Seattle and Puerto Rico.

Problems suggesting a culture issue at APD pre-date the Berry administration, although Schultz has been at the APD helm since April 2005.

Since 2010, APD officers have shot 23 men, killing 17. Some of those killed were mentally ill and unarmed. None of the officers has faced criminal charges or administrative discipline, although some of the Internal Affairs cases are still pending. After Journal stories, the Bernalillo County District Attorney’s unique “investigative grand juries,” which never found any officer-involved shooting unjustified, were discontinued.

The DA’s role in the culture question should be at the top of the list for Perez to examine — along with the inclusion of line supervisors such as sergeants in the same union of the street cops they supervise.

The policy changes already made at APD are encouraging, and changing a culture doesn’t happen overnight. The federal investigation could in fact give the administration the leverage it needs to make some of the changes blocked by collective bargaining agreements and the personnel system.

And hopefully the federal investigators won’t lose sight of the fact that police officers put on their badge for each shift knowing Albuquerque can be a dangerous place, sitting at the crossroads of two major interstate highways, just a couple hundred miles from the Mexican border.

Citizens cannot expect them to unnecessarily put their lives on the line and eschew use of force when it’s called for. Yet they do expect them to use sound judgment and avoid excessive force if possible.

Albuquerque may not know the outcome of the DOJ investigation for a year or more, but the goal — and the hope — is that the end result will be a better and more effective police department.

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.