City to pay $2.5 million to man who Albuquerque officer shot during schizoaffective episode

The city of Albuquerque has agreed to pay $2.5 million to a man who was permanently disabled after being shot by an officer during a schizoaffective episode.

The city’s decision to settle came mid-March while the lawsuit was in limbo after an appeal following a qualified immunity ruling from a federal judge.

In a statement, the city’s legal team said the June 2020 shooting of Max Mitnik at a home in an affluent gated community “predates full operations for the Albuquerque Community Safety department and many APD reforms.”

“The City continues to improve our emergency response, adding resources for the Community Safety department, which sends trained behavioral health responders to calls in our community 24/7,” according to the statement.

In 2022, Mitnik’s parents, on his behalf, sued the city and Albuquerque Police Department officer Jose Ruiz, seeking damages and alleging the city negligently dispatched police to respond to a mental health crisis without assistance from a health care professional.

“I think we were pleased that the city was willing to come to the table and negotiate,” attorney Ryan Villa, who represented the family, said Tuesday.

On June 4, Ruiz shot Mitnik in the head as Mitnik — in the middle of a behavioral health crisis — held a knife to his own neck in his parent’s Tanoan home. The shooting left Mitnik, now 31, largely paralyzed on his left side, and it has taken years for him to walk with the help of a cane.

An APD Internal Affairs investigation found Ruiz used force appropriately when he shot Mitnik, but that his “lack of command and control” escalated the situation to where force was necessary. Ruiz is still with APD, online records show.

Since the lawsuit was filed, Mitnik’s mother, his primary caretaker, has died, Villa said. His father has retired to help care for Mitnik, who has made progress but will never have full use of his extremities.

“He can walk, but he can’t do some of the things he liked to do, like hiking in the mountains or playing basketball, skiing,” he said. Villa added that Mitnik’s left eye was damaged by the shooting, and he can no longer drive as a result.

“Those things will never get any better,” Villa said.

Mitnik’s father, Michael Mitnik, told the Journal that the bullet “took away hope” of his son living a normal life. He has found medication to help stabilize his schizoaffective disorder, but the brain injury has left him reliant on others.

“His life and my life have totally changed since this happened,” Michael Mitnik said, adding what happened to their son broke his wife’s heart, “both physically and emotionally.”

He said he is rooting for Albuquerque Community Safety to prevent similar tragedies, but when his son had a more recent crisis, police showed up instead. Michael Mitnik added, “Those police, actually, they did good, those particular officers.”

The settlement from the city, he said, was “hopefully some admission that they have to do better.”

Mayor Tim Keller first spoke of the idea of the Albuquerque Community Safety department, which sought to send a non-law enforcement response to crisis calls, in the weeks following Mitnik’s shooting.

On Saturday, ACS announced it had reached the milestone of taking 100,000 calls for service since opening in 2021. In recent years, ACS has gone from handling 900 calls a month to handling 3,000, becoming a 24/7 service and opening a standalone headquarters.

Despite thousands of calls being rerouted to ACS during that time, fatal confrontations between officers and those in crisis have continued. In recent years, APD officers have shot and killed several people, a fair number of whom were armed, during a behavioral health crisis.

In February, an ACS worker called 911 after not being able to make contact with a man who was threatening suicide. When officers showed up, the man pointed an unloaded handgun at them and was fatally shot, according to police.