https://www.koat.com/article/five-times-more-apd-employees-have-been-fired-in-the-past-year/34064416
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. —
Albuquerque police are required under their own policies to report on police misconduct every four months.
But Target 7 found that nothing has been published since last year.Advertisement
When asked, APD said it was an oversight and quickly published two missing reports online after they were contacted by Target 7.
When the reports were published Target 7 discovered the following:
- The number of policy violations being investigated jumped from 291 to 913.
- The number of policies violated increased from 190 to 716.
- The number of violations requiring a suspension rose from 52 to 237.
- Five times more police employees were fired.
The data analyzed by Target 7 compares the last 12 months to the previous. It also includes civilian employees such as dispatchers and sworn law enforcement officers
“We are holding officers accountable when they need to be held accountable,” said newly-named interim police chief Harold Medina. “This is a positive thing. For a lot of years going back decades, We didn’t see these type of numbers in termination. One of the things we need to build upon is public trust and legitimacy in the community.”
Medina, who took over for retiring police Chief Michael Geier last week, says some of the increases can be explained by APD following requirements mandated by the Department of Justice and that includes reporting lower level policy violations like not showing up on time or being insubordinate
Medina says the DOJ told them “that APD was allergic to discipline at one point. I think those were the words that were used.”
So the department is cracking down.
Police union president Shaun Willoughby says APD is going too far.
“This isn’t egregious,” Willoughby said. “This doesn’t mean that Albuquerque cops are bad and can’t follow policy.”
The union leader says officers are being punished for things like not putting away lapel cameras properly to wearing sunglasses while speaking to the public.
“What I see happening is officers not using force when they should,” Willoughby said. “I see officers hesitating. I see officers not wanting to engage with the public simply because they don’t want to go to internal affairs again. They don’t want to get in trouble. They don’t want to have to tell their families ‘I got in trouble I am being investigated again.’”
Social justice activists say they want to know more about what is going on and are skeptical about why APD was not publishing the reports on their web site.
“The data released does raise a lot of questions than answers and there is still a lot of missing gaps,” said Devont’e Watson, a social justice activist and a consultant for the city’s office of equity and inclusion. “It is really important to be accountable and have full transparency with the community because it establishes trust.”
Chief Medina said he didn’t know why the reports were not published.
“I don’t have the exact answer as to why we had the delay,” Medina said. “In terms of gathering data, it is widely known that is an area we struggle with we take ownership of and we are working to increase our abilities to gather that data.”
He said things are going to change.
“I hope that from this point forward we are able to publish our data on time and we can correct our lack of being able to meet the deadlines of the past,” Medina said.
The report lists every incident in which officers were accused of wrongdoing, what policies they violated, if any, and how they were punished.
But Watson says the report is missing one thing that could make APD even more transparent.
Require the collection of data on people of color and all people,” Watson said. “We want to know who are involved in these officers and who is being done wrong.”
Devont'e Kurt Watson 