Photo surfaces of Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office top staff and key player in DWI scandal

The photo is grainy and awash with light glare, but the subjects are clear.

Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen has his arm around Ricardo “Rick” Mendez with his top command staff huddled together for the camera. The group is all smiles and Undersheriff Johann Jareno has popped his head up between Allen and Mendez.

The photo was taken inside a Little Anita’s restaurant in February 2023, according to the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office.

At the time, by Mendez’s own admission in a recent federal plea agreement, Mendez and Albuquerque DWI attorney Thomas Clear III were running a decades-old covert racketeering scheme paying police officers and BCSO deputies to help get drunken driving cases dismissed. But Allen, through a spokeswoman last week, said he had no knowledge of the scheme, or Mendez’s involvement, when the photo was taken.

The photo was obtained by the Journal through a public records request to the Albuquerque Police Department, which last year was investigating policy violations by an Internal Affairs commander who was friendly with Mendez.

Just this week, the sheriff asked Jareno to resign after learning from the FBI about his alleged involvement in the corruption case. BCSO deputy Jeff Hammerel also took a plea deal in the case, admitting he conspired with Mendez, Clear and a “supervisory BCSO deputy” to take bribes for letting DWI cases get dismissed.

Allen declined to be interviewed by the Journal this week about the photo and his relationship with Mendez, but a spokeswoman agreed to field questions sent by email.

“This was a general lunch,” said BCSO spokeswoman Jayme Gonzales. Asked about the reason for the “general lunch,” she replied in an email, “to eat lunch.” Pressed to clarify, she said Jareno and Mendez had a planned lunch “and the rest of the staff just simply joined in.”

“This was just a professional friendship,” she said of Mendez and Allen.

At the time of the lunch, Allen “had absolutely zero idea that Mendez was involved in the DWI scheme,” Gonzales told the Journal. “His only regret is that anyone was willing to participate in this disgusting lawlessness and obviously would not have taken the picture had he known of Mr. Mendez’s involvement.”

The photo — shot by a Little Anita’s employee — was taken a few weeks after Allen took on the role as sheriff.

Allen has not seen Mendez since then, wrote Gonzales in an email. She stated that the sheriff “did not personally know Mendez” but met him through Jareno “just a few years ago.” She added, “The Sheriff recalls being around Mendez a few (2-3) times prior to this photo.”

In a Feb. 12 interview with KRQE-TV reporter Ann Pierret, Allen discussed his relationship with Mendez, who was Clear’s private investigator since 2007.

“Rick Mendez, I was actually friends with. Rick donated to my campaign. I met with Tom Clear. I’ve talked to all of them for years,” Allen told Pierret. “That’s why when you asked earlier about emotions and is it alarming when it comes to Rick and Tom, it is more discouraging and disappointing to know and the perception that they had access to me. Did they ever try anything with me? No, because they know how I am already. But it really does bug me because that perception is out there.”

Campaign filing reports show Mendez gave $200 to Allen’s campaign for sheriff in 2022, while Jareno contributed $1,000. Mendez in the 1990s was a defendant in two federal cases charging him with possession with intent to distribute cocaine and marijuana. The outcome of the marijuana charges is unclear from online court records, but the cocaine case was dismissed after prosecutors stated he had furnished “information” they were looking into.

Allen, a Democrat, won election to a four-year term as sheriff in November 2022, after retiring from BCSO in 2019 as an 18-year veteran. His biography on the county’s website shows he joined the agency in 2001 and was promoted to sergeant in 2013, where he was assigned to the BCSO Criminal Investigations Division.

“Mr. Mendez and Tom Clear were both well-known in the law enforcement community because of the decades they were both involved in the court system,” Gonzales told the Journal.

When asked late last year by the Journal if he knew Mendez, Allen responded, “Everybody knows Rick Mendez.”

Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina on Wednesday told the Journal he has never met Mendez and didn’t know his name until news of the FBI’s investigation broke last year.

In his plea, Mendez admitted being in charge of the day-to-day operations of the scheme, negotiating bribe amounts and arranging meetings to exchange payments with law enforcement. Aside from cash, officers received other gifts, free hotel rooms, and free legal services to establish “goodwill” with the officers in the scheme, according to Hammerel’s plea agreement.

As for the sheriff, Gonzales said, “Mendez never provided any gifts, parties, or other favors for Sheriff Allen.”

“Obviously, there is an ongoing FBI investigation involving Mr. Mendez and this exact question regarding BCSO personnel and allegedly Mr. Jareno,” she said.

That day at Little Anita’s, everyone “paid for their own lunch,” Gonzales told the Journal.

“It is not unusual for the Sheriff and his staff to have lunch out in the community,” she stated. “Although he’s busy and it doesn’t happen often, the Sheriff has hundreds of professional contacts and he’s been willing to meet with many of them over the years. It wouldn’t be considered unusual for lunch to occur during one of those meet ups.”

The photo, and a related text message, were included as evidence in an APD Internal Affairs investigation of former IA commander Mark Landavazo last year.

Mendez sent the photo of himself with the sheriff’s officials to Landavazo on Feb. 27, 2023, along with a text message that stated, “Thank you. You made me sound like a hero.”

“Only cuz it was you,” replied Landavazo.

“Had a good lunch and great evening thanks to you,” Mendez wrote.

“Looked like a better lunch,” stated Landavazo, referring to the photo, according to the text thread.

Landavazo was fired by APD for policy violations months later. He has not been charged criminally as part of the FBI’s continuing investigation into the DWI racketeering scandal.