Jury awards Albuquerque officers over $1 million in whistleblower suit against city

Jurors awarded seven Albuquerque police officers a total of $1.085 million Tuesday in a case that stemmed from a 2023 police academy policy that required cadets to razor-shave their heads each morning.

The city of Albuquerque must pay $155,000 in damages to each officer, who alleged in a lawsuit that Albuquerque Police Department leaders retaliated against them after the son of a top APD commander was terminated from the police academy.

The verdict followed a seven-day trial in 2nd Judicial District Court before Judge Joshua Allison.

Levi Monagle, who represents the officers, said Albuquerque Police Department leaders “fabricated” hazing allegations against the officers who terminated the cadet.

“This case begins with a lie and ends with the erasure of that lie by some of the highest ranking members of the Albuquerque Police Department,” Monagle told jurors in closing arguments.

Attorneys for the city of Albuquerque responded that APD properly investigated a hazing incident in which the cadet was forced to shave his head in front of classmates, resulting in bleeding cuts to his head.

The attorneys argued that the case centered on an incident of harassment, not retaliation.

“The city takes those allegations seriously,” managing city attorney Catherine Gonzalez told jurors. “The city had a duty to investigate, and they did. They want us to punish the city for doing that.”

The whistleblower lawsuit alleged that APD leaders, including Chief Harold Medina, retaliated against the academy staff members following an Aug. 16, 2023, incident in which cadet Joshua Vega failed to razor-shave his head.

Vega, son of then-APD Cmdr. George Vega, was forced to shave his head in front of classmates in the academy gym while other cadets did exercises as a form of collective punishment.

Academy staff alleged that Joshua Vega lied about his failure to shave his head, which led to his termination from the academy the next day, followed by his prompt reinstatement to the academy.

Joshua Vega remains an APD officer. George Vega is now a deputy chief at APD.

Monagle told jurors that APD commanders retaliated against the training officers for sending an Aug. 24, 2023, letter to Chief Medina alleging nepotism and asking that they be restored as academy staff members.

In the letter, the officers said that Josh Vega was terminated because he admitted lying about shaving his head, which they said is a “class-one” violation in the academy handbook and punishable by termination.

The harassment investigation was “pretextual, which is a nice way of saying fabricated,” Monagle told jurors Tuesday. “This was constructed by the APD command staff to silence and discredit the academy staff for reporting Josh Vega for his dishonesty.”

Monagle asked jurors to award the officers $200,000 each for reassigning them to other departments at APD in retribution for sending the letter to Medina. Jurors sided with the officers but fell short of awarding them the total $1.4 million in damages that Monagle requested.

On Sept. 25, 2023, the seven officers received a letter from Medina notifying them that they were the targets of an investigation into “alleged inappropriate conduct, to possibly include hazing, toward a cadet,” the suit alleges.

Gonzalez told jurors the officers suffered no damage to their careers as a result of the verbal reprimand each received at the close of the investigation.

“They are asking for $200,000 because they were investigated, because the city had a duty to investigate,” she said. “They want you to feel sorry for them because they were investigated. They didn’t lose any pay. They didn’t get demoted. The evidence shows accountability, not retaliation.”

Gonzalez also said the officers have taken no responsibility for hazing a cadet.

“None of them have taken accountability for this,” Gonzalez told jurors. “They didn’t even have a smidge of empathy for the fact that maybe (Vega) did feel humiliated.”

Three of the officers who filed the lawsuit — Lisa Neil, Shane Treadaway and Steve Martinez — returned to work at the APD academy in January 2024.

The other plaintiffs in the suit are Tillery Stahr, Alix Emrich, James Jacoby and Kelsey Lueckenhoff.