Man leading probe of APD has problems of his own

The man in charge of investigating internal problems in the Albuquerque Police Department suddenly has a pretty big problem of his own.

Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Justice, this week saw his division come under serious fire with the release of an internal Justice Department report that revealed racial tension and deep divisions in his office.

The report comes at a tough time for Perez, who is reportedly President Obama’s choice to replace Hilda Solis as Secretary of Labor. The Justice report is sure to trigger tough questions from congressional critics during confirmation hearings. The explosive review, conducted by the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General, centers on the division’s prosecution of the New Black Panther Party, which was accused of voter intimidation during the 2008 election.

The document claims Perez gave misleading testimony in 2010 when he claimed that political appointees were not involved in decisions about the Black Panther case. Perez did not return a phone call seeking comment from the Journal last week, but Politico reported last week that he stands by his assertion with respect to the Black Panther case, despite the findings in the new report.

The inspector general’s report also documents several instances of employees in the civil rights division asserting that their more conservative colleagues were racist – but some of those instances date to the administration of former President George W. Bush. Perez, a former secretary of labor for the state of Maryland, came to the U.S. Justice Department in 2009.

Perez has been involved in dozens of police investigations, including the current APD inquiry which is focusing on the department’s use of force and whether it meets constitutional requirements more often than not. Albuquerque Police Chief Ray Schultz announced his retirement Friday afternoon in the midst of the federal inquiry. Schultz plans to stay at APD through the summer or fall – or at least until the “fact-finding” portion of the DOJ investigation is complete.

During a news conference in Albuquerque late last year, Perez described getting to the core of troubled police departments: “When you open up one door, thinking that’s the only door you’ll open, you often find that there are five more doors and a few windows and maybe an attic and even a trap door that you have to go through.”

Well, Justice Department Inspector Michael Horowitz has been peeking into some doors and windows at the civil rights division and didn’t much like what he saw. Horowitz reviewed more than 10,000 documents and interviewed 80 people, including Attorney General Eric Holder, and found “troubling” evidence of liberal bias and intimidation of conservative employees.

According to the report: “Several career attorneys noted that some of the purportedly liberal career Voting Section (a division of the civil rights office) employees would ostracize conservatives in the office, exclude them from meetings on cases or matters, or make derogatory comments about their involvement in cases.

“At least two witnesses who identified themselves as conservatives told the OIG that, when they worked on controversial matters, attorneys who were perceived to be liberal would interrogate them about the matters and exert significant pressure on them to arrive at conclusions that fell in line with traditionally liberal views.”

In a written response included in the report, Perez said he agreed that the inspector general had “identified several instances of unacceptable conduct.”

“We agree that mistreatment of Division employees based on their political ideology is never appropriate, and in the past several years we have implemented a number of measures to ensure that the Division and the Voting Section continue to maintain a professional and collegial work environment,” Perez said.

The report quickly became fodder for Republican lawmakers who have long accused Holder of political bias and even incompetence.

Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the report showed “an inherent culture of harassment against conservatives in the Civil Rights Division.” Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., said he was “deeply troubled” by the report’s findings and that the department had become “a rat’s nest of unacceptable and unprofessional actions, and even outright threats against career attorneys and systemic management.”

Not everyone on Capitol Hill saw it that way.

Rep. John Conyers, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, told Politico that the report “confirms that under the leadership of (Perez) the Voting Section has been restored to evenhanded enforcement of the law and the highest standards of professionalism.”

In a Journal interview last year about his inquiry into alleged misconduct at the Albuquerque Police Department, Perez said changing an organization’s culture isn’t easy.

“Culture change does not occur overnight,” he said. “Culture change takes time.”

E-mail: mcoleman@abqjournal.com