Editorial: Proof APD oversight needs a total makeover

A state District Court judge has ruled as a matter of law that Albuquerque Police officer Brett Lampiris-Tremba’s fatal shooting of Iraq war veteran Kenneth Ellis III was unconstitutional and unjustified.

In other words, she concluded it was so clear cut it didn’t even need to go to a jury.

And that should finally give defenders of the current system of police oversight serious pause.

Because that oversight system in this case included a 2010 “investigative grand jury” that ruled the shooting was justified. Bernalillo County District Attorney Kari Brandenburg continues to defend this sham version of justice, even though state judges have disallowed it.

And that oversight included a decision by the city’s Police Oversight Commission to ignore findings by its then-Independent Review Officer William Deaton that the shooting was not justified.

And it included a decision by APD Chief Ray Schultz that the shooting was justified and Lampiris-Tremba should not be disciplined.

In fact, Lampiris-Tremba is still on the public payroll and carrying a gun.

Judge Shannon Bacon concluded that Ellis holding a gun to his own head in a parking lot would not have led a reasonable officer to believe Ellis posed a threat to other officers or anyone else — and thus the use of deadly force violated his Fourth Amendment rights to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. (According to depositions, Ellis never pointed the gun at officers and never threatened them.) As a result, that part of the family’s civil case will not go to a jury.

Attorney Joe Kennedy, who is representing Ellis’ family, says “in large part, this case is about damages now.”

Damages, and damage control.

Because not only will taxpayers likely be writing a hefty check once jurors review the remaining issues — including APD’s training/lack thereof, crisis negotiation skills and lawfulness of the traffic stop — they should also be asking for substantive procedural changes that restore integrity and confidence in the systems that are supposed to police the city’s police officers.

The City Council is in the early stages of revamping the oversight commission after it came to light that one then-member simultaneously served on a panel whose organization is opposed to citizen police oversight and another shut down public comment at a public meeting.

State judges have suspended the bogus investigative grand juries that in decades never saw a police shooting that wasn’t justified.

But the Justice Department is in the thick of a civil rights investigation into APD and its string of 27 shootings, 17 fatal, since 2010.

One of the first of those shootings was by Lampiris-Tremba, who uttered “(expletive), did I shoot?” after hitting Ellis in the neck and killing him.

Now that a state judge has ruled the much-defended shooting violated the basic rights of a veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder who posed no immediate threat, there is only one way to move forward.

And that is setting up a system of police oversight that really does demand the best of the many professional and conscientious men and women who deserve to wear the badge.

And quickly weeds out the ones who do not.

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.