'Momentous occasion': Albuquerque mayor, police chief see finish line in reform effort

Amid a rash of use-of-force cases that often turned deadly, were deemed excessive and ultimately viewed as unconstitutional, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that the Albuquerque Police Department needed to be reformed in November 2014.

Tim Keller had just been elected New Mexico state auditor and Harold Medina soon left a 20-year career at APD to become chief of Laguna Pueblo police. Several years later, as mayor and APD chief, both men would end up at the forefront of the federally mandated police reforms.

On Saturday, after years of backslides turned into progress, the two men declared victory in what Keller called a “landmark occasion” — the DOJ having filed a motion the day before to dismiss the consent decree against APD, known as the Court-Approved Settlement Agreement (CASA).

“This is not a victory for myself or the people standing up front. This is a victory for the men and women of the Albuquerque Police Department who have changed their culture,” Medina said during a briefing outside APD’s Downtown headquarters. “They are the ones that have put the most blood, sweat and tears into this and faced the most scrutiny. ... We are not perfect. People will make mistakes, both by accident and purposely, in the future, but we created a process where they will be held accountable.”

U.S. District Judge James Browning still must approve the motion to dismiss the CASA and take APD out of federal oversight, but the DOJ has signaled that the department held up its end of the bargain. The next hearing before Browning, revolving around Independent Monitor James Ginger’s most recent compliance report, is set for May 15, but it is unclear if the judge will take up the motion to dismiss the CASA.

In the motion, the DOJ said APD had reached full and sustained compliance with the requirements of the consent decree and lowered use-of-force incidents, both in general and those deemed unconstitutional. Police shootings by APD officers have reached an all-time high in recent years, but almost every instance of deadly force has been found to be within policy.

“As in many consent decree situations, the City in this case achieved compliance, leading to the termination of the decree. Consent decrees are not meant to be indefinite,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, with the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement.

‘Keep pushing for trust’

Keller and Medina emphasized that while this may be the end of the consent decree, the reforms will continue.

“We always have to keep improving. We always have to keep pushing for trust and for safety and for progress. And I know that APD is a very different department,” Keller said. “Does it have zero issues? Of course not. Will there be uses of force that are questionable, that are wrong? That inevitably will happen. Will there be bad actors in the police department? That will also happen ... we will efficiently hold folks accountable for violations, big and small. That is the process in the systems that we have built.”

In 2023, the city hired a monitoring team of its own to outlast the CASA, and Medina said on Saturday that the team would stick around. “We intend for them to be permanent, as long as this administration is in place,” he added, noting that a mayoral election is on the horizon.

The team is made up of former Metropolitan Court judges Sharon Walton and Victor Valdez as monitor of police training and monitor of discipline and misconduct, respectively, and retired Las Vegas, Nevada, police undersheriff Christopher Darcy as monitor of use of force. Former city attorney Bob White was called the architect of the monitoring team, which he modeled after Ginger’s team.

Medina said when Keller took him on as police chief when Michael Geier resigned, he was asked for two things: to lower crime and finish the reform effort. With data showing crime on an overall decrease in the past several years, he said the goal is within reach. But he said it took a lot of soul-searching for the department to come to this place.

“Sometimes in order to be able to improve, we must admit that we were wrong,” Medina said. “This administration has had to take the high road many times and say we could have done better, and we are going to do better. And those are the reasons why we have gotten to the point where we’re at.”