U.S. District judge dismisses CASA; city has 'earned back the right to run our own police department,' mayor says

The city of Albuquerque has “earned back the right” to run its own police department again, Mayor Tim Keller said after a U.S. District Court judge dismissed the Court-Approved Settlement Agreement (CASA) Monday. The ruling ends more than a decade of federal oversight of the Albuquerque Police Department.

U.S. District Court Judge James O. Browning’s ruling comes days after the city and U.S. Department of Justice jointly filed a motion seeking approval to end the consent decree after APD achieved “full and effective compliance with all terms of the agreement,” Mayor’s Office spokesperson Staci Drangmeister said in a news release.

“This ruling finalizes what the department and our community have worked tirelessly for over the last decade: We have earned back the right to run our own police department,” Keller said in a statement.

CASA was enacted in 2014 following a DOJ investigation that revealed patterns of excessive force by officers. Since then, “APD underwent a rigorous transformation, embracing new policies, increasing transparency and embedding accountability into its daily operations,” Drangmeister said.

“It wasn’t an easy road, but we continued to push forward and slowly this team and all of our officers became accustomed to what was necessary to get into compliance,” Police Chief Harold Medina said in the release.

The “overarching change” is an emphasis on constitutional policing, “whereby APD officers treat those individuals suspected of crime equally, irrespective of race or gender,” Drangmeister said.

“This has been accomplished through the adoption of policies and training concerning the constitutional application of the use of force on suspects driven by the specific circumstances of that officer’s encounter,” she added.

Drangmeister stated that other changes include:

• Restructuring multiple divisions — including the APD Academy, Special Operations Division and Special Investigations Division — to provide additional supervisory oversight, and creating new units like the Performance Metrics Unit and Compliance Bureau.
• Appointing a superintendent to oversee officer discipline, removing this function from the chief.
• Expanding community outreach via the ambassador program to better communicate with entities and groups impacted by pre-CASA policing.
• Ensuring that APD data is transparent and publicly available, furthering goals of maintaining the community’s trust in law enforcement. Officers are required to use recording devices to capture their interactions with the public. APD has created and maintained numerous dashboards showing underlying data to support its efforts.

With the changes, she said the city and APD “reaffirm their pledge to continue building a modern, community-focused police department grounded in constitutional policing and public trust.”