APD crash report frustrates board
Department’s ‘haphazard’ presentation lacks details
“Haphazard” is how the head of the Albuquerque Police Oversight Board described the city’s highly anticipated presentation to the board about how often its police officers crash their vehicles — a presentation without any displays or report and with very few statistics.
The oversight board has been asking police officials for months why officers in Albuquerque appear to be involved in so many car wrecks, and the board sought a comprehensive review of the data.
A presentation that had been scheduled for May was pushed back until the board’s June meeting, which was on Thursday night.
After the presentation, an obviously frustrated board asked APD to come back with a more comprehensive report, questioning why the department was not taking their request “seriously.”
During the presentation, an APD data analyst said that in 2016, officers in Oklahoma City were in 307 crashes, officers in Portland, Ore., were in 123 and officers in El Paso were in 151. She said Albuquerque police officers were in 326 crashes during all of 2016 and the first five months of 2017.
The analyst said most of the police departments of similar size to APD that she contacted
for the presentation didn’t return her calls.
“I’m not getting responses. So maybe I need to move on to other departments,” said Natalee Davila, the analyst who gave the presentation. “I’m at a standstill at the moment.”
She also said the data provided about other departments wasn’t the most useful information, as the cities that responded have different sized police departments, population sizes and miles that officers patrol. She said they also use different definitions and track records differently than Albuquerque police.
“I was really disappointed,” Chairwoman Joanne Fine said of the information presented. “Not in the data analyst but in the higher ups that left her to make the calls and left her to get through the gatekeepers that aren’t going to put it high on their list, which is a frustration.”
Fine suggested the analyst collect data from a wide range of police agencies and then get a per-capita figure for how many crashes the departments are involved in.
The Albuquerque police crash statistics provided to the board on Thursday seem to contradict records the Civilian Police Oversight Agency compiled while completing a separate study earlier this year. According to that study, from Feb. 26, 2016, to Jan. 1, 2017, Albuquerque police officers were in 300 car wrecks — averaging nearly one a day.
That’s a far higher rate of accidents than what APD’s crime analyst provided the board — that there were 326 crashes over 17 months.
Celina Espinoza, a police spokeswoman, said the department ran into unexpected difficulties when trying to compare crash data from other departments. She said APD has a very comprehensive approach to tallying police crashes, and includes any instance when officers do any sort of damage to their cars, from a fender bender to totaling a car. She said other departments don’t collect all that data.
“Other departments don’t retain the data comparatively to the way we do. So we are doing more research and further searching for the best way to provide the board clear and accurate information,” she said in a prepared statement. “We look forward to cooperating with and transparently reporting to the (Civilian Police Oversight Agency and oversight board) further on this matter.”
Board member David Ring said in addition to the comparison with other cities, he still wants to see a more detailed presentation on APD’s crashes and how officers in multiple wrecks are retrained.
Board members’ concerns about officer-involved crashes were heightened recently after officer Johnathan McDonnell in April crashed into a family while responding to a 911 call and killed a 6-year-old boy. McDonnell had been in five “preventable” crashes and an unauthorized pursuit prior to the crash, according to police documents. He has been an officer since 2008. He received letters of reprimand and suspensions after some of the previous crashes.
But it wasn’t just McDonnell’s most recent crash that prompted board members to inquire about the data. As part of the board’s monthly meetings, police officials give board members a tally of how many investigations into police crashes the department closes each month. In March, for example, that number was 66. The number given to the board reflected how many investigations had been closed, but it had been reported that there were 66 crashes that month.
The board asked for a full study on officer crashes at its April meeting, but for months prior to that, several board members have been raising concerns publicly about the number of crashes police are involved in. Ring said he’ll keep pushing until he gets an answer about how Albuquerque police compare to other departments.
“I would love to get that answer and we keep asking and asking, but like a lot of other things with APD, they tend to string it out and weave and bob and dodge a little bit,” Ring said. “We keep trying to zero in on it and hopefully if we keep hammering them on it they’ll eventually come through with the reality.”
It wasn’t clear how much the crashes have cost the city, another question that’s been raised by the board.
“I guess I don’t understand why it’s not taken more seriously to educate our officers and prevent future crashes,” Ring said. “If I were involved in five crashes, my insurance company would drop me . ... I don’t understand the lack of seriousness with this.”