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Albuquerque police fire two supervisors as sergeant resigns amid DWI corruption probe
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The Albuquerque Police Department fired two supervisors and a sergeant resigned after the three were tied to a decadeslong scheme to pay off law enforcement to sabotage DWI cases.
APD spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said Deputy Cmdr. Gustavo Gomez and Lt. Matthew Chavez were terminated Tuesday and Sgt. Lucas Perez resigned.
Gomez and Chavez were fired for violating policies “related to the DWI investigation,” Gallegos said, but he would not elaborate on the specifics of the violations.
All three had previously been in the DWI unit and placed on paid leave in the past year: Gomez in October, Chavez in January, and Perez, previously a DWI sergeant, on Monday.
None of the three have been charged criminally in the FBI’s ongoing investigation into the sprawling corruption case, one of the largest to hit the state.
So far, four APD officers and one Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office deputy have pleaded guilty to taking bribes from defense attorney Thomas Clear III and paralegal Ricardo “Rick” Mendez to let their client’s DWI cases get dismissed. Clear and Mendez have also taken plea deals, with Clear admitting the corruption went back as far as 1995.
Aside from those who have pleaded guilty in the case, more than a dozen APD officers, three Bernalillo County deputies, including the undersheriff, and one New Mexico State Police officer have been placed on leave as the agencies conduct their own internal investigations into the corruption.
The Bernalillo County District Attorney has had to dismiss more than 260 DWI cases involving other such law enforcement officers linked to the federal case.
