City cuts a deal with team monitoring police reforms. Here's how much it'll make

After a monthslong negotiation, the city of Albuquerque has agreed to pay more than $1 million over the next year to the team overseeing police reforms.

In April, the city proposed a 40% pay cut for Independent Monitor James Ginger and his team, from just under $1.6 million annually to $960,000 a year. The monitoring team has been paid more than $10 million since its work began in Albuquerque.

In the letter proposing the pay cut, the city’s Chief Administrative Officer Lawrence Rael cited a perceived lighter workload for the monitoring team due to the Albuquerque Police Department’s recent progress with compliance.

Ginger apparently responded with a counteroffer and reached an agreement with the city on July 21 to be paid $1,096,225 between July 1, 2023, and June 20, 2024, which amounts to around a 31% pay cut, or $500,000.

The City Attorney, in an email to Ginger, wrote “the City intends to request a mid-year meeting to review budget issues, and to initiate negotiations regarding the rate for fiscal year 2025 as the end of fiscal year 2024 approaches.”

“After making the initial offer, the City engaged with negotiations with Dr. Ginger and reached agreement on a reasonable amount based on the expected workload for the team of monitors,” Rael said in a statement Thursday. “This amount will be subject to renegotiation in the future as APD assumes more responsibility and the monitoring team’s workload is reduced.”

Ginger did not respond to a request for comment.

Ginger and the monitoring team began overseeing police reform efforts after the city signed a consent decree with the Department of Justice in 2014, following the DOJ’s determination that APD officers displayed a pattern of excessive force.

APD’s compliance ebbed and flowed until recently, when the department reached 92% “operational compliance,” {span}which tracks whether officers are following policies and being corrected when they don’t, and 100% secondary compliance, which concerns officer training.

In his initial pay cut proposal to Ginger, Rael said it was appropriate as APD had made “significant strides” in its Court Approved Settlement Agreement, or CASA, and was now self-assessing much of the requirements — developments that had reduced Ginger’s workload as monitor.

During a recent CASA hearing, Ginger addressed the proposed cut and said his team had come back to the city with its own proposed cut of $444,000 a year.

“Which is significant,” Ginger said during the hearing. “Especially when you consider that we still have to make the same number of trips, we still have to pay the same number of man hours per site visit. A lot of our costs are fixed. But we are negotiating a reduction.”

Apparently, the city got the team to come down a little more.

Shaun Willoughby, president of the police union, said it was “incredibly competent and courageous” for the city to propose a pay cut for Ginger’s team in the first place.

“My hat’s off to the City of Albuquerque. I think (Ginger) is way overpaid to begin with,” he said, adding that the monitoring process “has completely destroyed this community” by leading to a rise in crime and an understaffed department.

When APD signed onto the consent decree, there were around 900 officers, according to Journal reporting. Currently, APD officials say there are 884 sworn personnel and 58 cadets.

Both property and violent crime rose in Albuquerque after 2014, and New Mexico was repeatedly ranked worst and second-worst in the nation for property and violent crime. Crime statistics released by APD in March showed that violent crime and property crime had dropped 4% and 40%, respectively, since 2017.

“From my perspective and from an officer’s perspective, this whole entire situation with the DOJ and monitoring team is a joke,” Willoughby said, adding that APD officers’ previous use of force “has been blown out of proportion” and less than 1% of police calls result in force being used.

“I don’t think that use of force in this community is that big of a problem. I don’t think it ever was,” he said.

Furthermore, Willoughby said, the reform process is “directly tied” to the record-high 18 police shootings of 2022 due to DOJ-reviewed policies that resulted in gunfire instead of less-lethal force. He said recent changes to APD policies made by leadership have allowed more use of less-lethal force and, in his opinion, could have prevented nine of last year’s shootings.

“I think we could do just the same work without the DOJ and without the monitoring process. We have become accustomed to the reform effort. We’re making progress right now,” Willoughby said. “I am pleased that we are making that progress, but the truth is I’m pleased that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.”

APD officials have set their sights on 2026 as a possible end to the consent decree.