Live coverage: APD shooting death trial day 2

Nora Tachias-Anaya, center, facing camera, hugs Kenneth Ellis Jr. outside an Albuquerque courtroom on Thursday. At left is Krissy Ann Ellis-Encino, the sister of Kenneth Ellis III, who was fatally shot by an APD officer in 2010. (Pat Vasquez-Cunningham/Journal)

 
Journal reporter Jeff Proctor is in the courtroom at the Ellis trial. He will be live tweeting and filing updates on this page.

Read Proctor’s complete story on the first day of the trail: Trial opens in APD shooting death

12:45 p.m.
The morning session of Day Two in the trial about a 2010 APD shooting featured a stern indictment of APD’s decision to hire Brett Lampiris-Tremba —and police officials’ subsequent decisions to keep him on the force —from the plaintiffs’ expert witness.

Melvin Tucker, a former FBI agent and police chief in North Carolina, also had some heated exchanges with Deputy City Attorney Kathy Levy in state District Judge Shannon Bacon’s courtroom.

Tucker’s testimony took up the entirety of the morning session in the trial, which is the final stage in a civil wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of Iraq War veteran Kenneth Ellis III.

APD Detective Brett Lampiris-Tremba fatally shot Ellis in the neck on Jan. 13, 2010 outside a 7-Eleven at Eubank and Constitution NE.

Ellis had left the apartment of a suspected car thief that police were watching. Officer Byron “Trey” Economidy blocked Ellis’ Corvette into a parking space outside the convenience store, and Ellis eventually got out of the car and held a gun to his own head during a nine-minute encounter with officers before Lampiris-Tremba shot him.

Bacon ruled last month that the shooting was excessive force as a matter of law, leaving the jury to decide how much money the city owes Ellis’ young son. Jurors also are considering several other claims, including that the city was negligent in hiring, training and retaining Lampiris-Tremba.

Tucker began testifying at 9 a.m., and I didn’t arrive in court until 10 a.m.

As I walked in, Tucker was testifying under direct examination by plaintiffs’ attorney Joe Kennedy that the hiring and selection process are the most important role of a chief at a police department.

“If you don’t do that right, you can have all the training you want, and it won’t matter,” Tucker said. “If you’ve hired a bad apple in the beginning, well, now you’ve just got a bad apple who is trained.”

Lampiris-Tremba was denied employment with APD in 1992. He applied again in 1997, and APD hired him.

Tucker said that was a mistake because Lampiris-Tremba had: admitted to using a fake ID to buy alcohol in 1987 when he was 17 years old in the military; admitted to “walking naked in public with his wife” years prior in Hawaii; admitted to stealing $20 from his employer when he was 15; and admitted to lying about past drug use on his 1992 application with APD.

Moreover, Tucker pointed out, a city psychologist listed “reservations” about Lampiris-Tremba in three of four categories contained in a pre-employment screening.

“The psychologist predicted that Brett Lampiris-Tremba would be disciplined for cause during his first 12 months of employment,” Tucker testified.

On cross-examination, Levy pointed out that he wasn’t.

“No dire prediction came true, did it?” she said.

Tucker replied: “Well, it took longer than 12 months.”

In 2003, Lampiris-Tremba was suspended for a day after he admitted to lying on a time sheet.

Tucker said he would’ve fired Lampiris-Tremba for the lie.

“If you lie — there’s nothing more significant to the integrity of a law enforcement officer,” he said. “And if you asked 99.9 percent of law enforcement officers, they’d agree.”

Levy challenged Tucker, saying that was simply his judgment, which the veteran expert court witness was “substituting for the judgment of the Albuquerque Police Department” after the fact and without knowing Lampiris-Tremba.

“You can see where (APD’s) judgment led us: here, today … Yes, I’m substituting my judgment for the judgment of Chief Ray Schultz,” who at the time was the deputy chief who signed off on the one-day suspension, Tucker said. “I would’ve fired him … I don’t care if an officer writes great reports if he lies.”

Tucker also called into question APD’s decision to keep Lampiris-Tremba on the force after a 2004 incident in which he pulled over a suspected car thief — who turned out to be innocent — and used a Taser on him.

Lampiris-Tremba didn’t fill out a required use of force form, and APD brass decided to issue a 10-hour suspension that was held in abeyance.

Finally, Tucker said APD’s own policies in 2009 weren’t in accordance with national standards about whether officers could fire shots at moving vehicles.

That year, according to Levy, Lampiris-Tremba fired several shots from his shotgun into the tires of a moving vehicle.

Tucker said the officer’s decision was a poor one — regardless of what APD policy said at the time.

Tucker also said Lampiris-Tremba and Economidy broke with APD policies in the way they handled the scene before Ellis was shot. That’s because they didn’t do enough to try to de-escalate the situation and communicate with Ellis.

A friend of Ellis’ and a former APD sergeant will be the next two witnesses to testify.

I’ll continue to live tweet the trial. My Twitter feed is embedded on the Journal website, or you can follow me on Twitter (@cjproctor74).

Pick up a copy of tomorrow’s Journal for a complete story.