June 9 – Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina was in Las Vegas, Nevada, in November to watch Raiders football when he learned that one of his officers – a suspect in a highly confidential FBI corruption investigation – could have been warned about the investigation.
Medina learned that the city’s Civil Police Oversight Agency notified DWI officer Honorio Alba Jr. that a senior state court official alleged “questionable conduct” related to Alba’s DWI arrest of a court employee more than two months earlier – an employee that Alba never brought charges against.
The civil oversight body opened an investigation and sent the complaint to Alba, who identified the employee. A CPOA investigator told Alba in an attached email: “At this time, you are considered a target of this investigation.”
The news sent Medina into damage control, and within hours he alerted the U.S. Attorney for New Mexico, Alex Uballez, about what had happened, according to emails obtained by the Journal.
Uballez, along with the U.S. Department of Justice, is overseeing the ongoing criminal investigation into allegations that DWI officers were accepting bribes from an Albuquerque defense attorney and paralegal in exchange for not filing citations in court or failing to appear to court for drunk driving. cases. The scheme allegedly occurred for more than a decade.
APD’s Internal Affairs division handles complaints of potential criminal matters, but CPOA decided to treat Alba’s complaint as an administrative matter rather than forwarding it to IA.
The Nov. 3 complaint forwarded to Alba stated that the officer put then-court clerk Antonio Barron in contact “with a specific attorney, possibly named ‘Rick,’ who, if retained, would ensure that no legal proceedings would be filed in court by the APD. .”
Two business days after receiving the CPOA complaint, on the morning of November 13, court records show that Alba filed DWI charges against Barron, whom he arrested on August 24, 2023, and released without a jail record.
At the same time, Alba also filed DWI citations against three other men he had arrested for DWI in the previous weeks and months. He sent everyone a summons to appear in court, but only Barron showed up. Warrants were filed for the others for failure to appear in court.
The complaint raised questions about the actions and procedures of the Civil Police Inspection Agency, which handles investigations into citizen complaints. Its director recently told the Journal that her office was following the law and the Albuquerque Police Officers Association collective agreement in sending the report to Alba and keeping the case internally initially.
Ultimately, Alba was informed that the report contained nothing and the investigation was closed. Medina told the Journal last week that she “cancelled” the investigation, which was returned to IA after her intervention.
It is unclear whether the incident affected the ongoing criminal investigation. No arrests have been made in the nearly five months since federal search warrants were executed Jan. 18 at the home of Alba and the other two DWI officers; and attorney Thomas Clear and his paralegal Rick Mendez.
Medina declined to comment when Diário asked for his opinion on what happened. APD reached a milestone recently after an independent monitoring team concluded that the agency was in compliance with a multi-faceted degree of consent designed to prevent unlawful excessive force by police and increase accountability in its Internal Affairs processes. and CPOA.
On Friday, APD spokesman Gilbert Gallegos told the Journal: “Officers have rights under the (collective bargaining agreement) and Section 29-14-4 to have information about a complaint and the complainant to be able to defend himself. investigation is open.”
“The CPOA should not initiate an investigation if there are criminal allegations. They should transfer the complaint to IA,” he continued. “In the past, the CPOA has transferred cases with criminal allegations to IA. I don’t know why this one hasn’t gone that route.”
CPOA Director Dianne McDermott, in an email to the Journal, defended her agency’s actions. The court administrator’s complaint against Alba was “vague and cited questionable conduct and more,” she wrote.
“Given the lack of specificity in this complaint, and not being informed by APD of a potential brewing issue or case, the CPOA did its due diligence first as a normal course of business,” McDermott said. She said the report was forwarded to Alba “before a preliminary investigation could determine its direction.”
McDermott did not respond to the Journal’s questions about when a citizen complaint should be sent to an officer or why the CPOA sent the complaint to Alba before knowing where the allegations led.
In her email response, she cited the city’s collective bargaining agreement guideline with police, which states, simply, “the officer in question will also receive a copy of the official report, signed or unsigned.”
“We are required by the terms (of the CBA) to submit this information as necessary,” McDermott wrote. “If we do not do so, the (police union) will raise protests that process was not followed and any resulting proposed discipline should be overturned.”
However, the union agreement also states that “as soon as it is determined that an officer will be the subject of an administrative investigation, he or she will be notified, unless such disclosure could compromise the investigation.”
The city ordinance governing the citizen review process states: “At any time during an investigation, the investigator determines that there may have been criminal conduct on the part of any APD employee, the investigator shall immediately notify the commander of the Department of Internal Affairs of the APD and will transfer the administrative investigation to the Internal Affairs Department.”
The CPOA’s letter to Alba on Nov. 9 stated he was being investigated for allegedly violating APD’s code of personal conduct and a mandate about filing reports after making arrests.
Asked if any changes had occurred following the Alba case, McDermott responded, “There has been discussion with the Chief (APD) to increase communication with the CPOA Director regarding potential investigations so that if complaints arise on the same topics, they can be evaluated with this additional information in mind and addressed.”
Shaun Willoughby, president of the police union, said he believed that, with what was known at the time, the report “100%” should have been sent to the officer.
“If the CPOA read this complaint and did not assume, or think, that there was any criminal allegation in the complaint, then it acted correctly,” he said. “APD is looking at this in hindsight, knowing what it knows now.”
Willoughby added: “I don’t think there is any way, shape or form the CPOA had any indication that this was part of a really big fish.”
The tip
After the federal investigation into the DWI unit became public earlier this year, Medina ordered an internal affairs investigation into the allegations. This continues.
Alba, who resigned from APD in February, could not be reached for comment.
He and officers Daren DeAguero, Joshua Montaño, Nelson Ortiz, Harvey Johnson and Lt. Justin Hunt, who had no longer been assigned to the DWI unit at the time, resigned or retired at the time they were to be interviewed as part of the IA investigation. . .
Meanwhile, 2nd Judicial District Attorney Sam Bregman, to avoid a conflict in processing cases brought by these officers, dismissed nearly 200 DWI cases earlier this year.
The day before his resignation, Alba filed four other DWI cases stemming from his previous arrests. Those too were eventually dismissed, as was Barron’s.
Barron, who could not be reached for comment, was arrested by Alba on the morning of Aug. 24 after his car was stopped near Interstate 25 and Cesar Chavez Avenue traveling at 133 mph in a 55 mph zone. His sedan’s headlights and taillights were out, he was unable to maintain his lane and nearly crashed into a vehicle in front of him, according to the citation Alba wrote.
He showed signs of intoxication and was taken by Alba to the Prisoner Transport Center, where he refused to take a breathalyzer test, which constituted aggravated DWI. He was apparently released at that point, but it was unclear who caught him. There was no explanation in the court records as to why the citation was not served at that time, or why Barron was not booked.
Barron resigned as a state district court clerk in late September, but Katina Watson, executive director of the state district courts of Bernalillo County, sent the complaint to the CPOA on Nov. 3.
“On behalf of the Second Judicial District Court, I am contacting you regarding an APD DWI citation that was issued to Antonio Barron, a former employee…”
The letter stated that Barron notified court officials that he had been charged with driving under the influence on or about August 24 or 25.
“We have not questioned or conducted any type of internal investigation, however, we have been advised that there may be questionable conduct on the part of the arresting/citation officer. More specifically, that the arresting/citation officer placed Mr. Barron in contact with a specific attorney, possibly named ‘Rick,’ who, if retained, would ensure that no legal proceedings would be filed by APD,” Watson’s letter stated.
“While we do not have first-hand knowledge of what communications and actions occurred, we are reporting this out of concern,” Watson added. It was unclear whether Barron ever contacted Clear or her legal assistant.
‘Taken into account’
The FBI’s ongoing criminal investigation emerged last Tuesday during five hours of testimony regarding APD and CPOA’s compliance with a court-approved settlement agreement. The 10-year-old agreement aims to eliminate unlawful police shootings and excessive force and also calls for greater accountability of APD’s Internal Affairs Division and the handling of complaints against officers.
Independent monitors present at the hearing reported that APD has achieved compliance and will self-monitor for the next two years. But they reported that the CPOA did not meet requirements to complete its investigations in a timely manner, a problem attributed in part to a lack of staff. The monitoring team’s report covered the period from last August to January 31 this year.
During the hearing, U.S. District Judge James Browning brought up the DWI unit’s criminal investigation and asked, “If what I read in the newspaper could be occurring, would it violate any of the terms (of the agreement)? If the police department did not was able to uncover such a large issue, would it cause any concerns (related to complying with the consent decree)?”
Paul Killebrew, deputy chief of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, responded that he was not aware of the DOJ’s criminal division investigation. He said it would be premature to draw any conclusions.
“But APD can’t solve its force problem if it doesn’t solve its accountability function,” Killebrew said. “I don’t know what’s going on or how pervasive the situation is, but in any large organization, it’s to be expected that some people will break the law. We don’t know if it’s a system failure or individual violations. .”
Browning pressed: “Is this an area that could be an issue with continued compliance over the next two years?”
“Ah, yes,” said Killebrew. If the FBI’s criminal investigation uncovers a widespread problem that calls for APD to be held accountable, “it would raise some serious questions about the effectiveness of reform.”
U.S. Attorney Uballez told the judge there is much he and Medina cannot disclose about the FBI probe, but Uballez added that the investigation proceeded in “full” partnership with APD.
“People will be held accountable,” he added.
