Find out if APD monitor living up to $4.5M deal

Just about the last thing a city taxpayer wants when its police department is under a settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice is for its City Council to get crosswise with the federal monitor. If the goal is to reform your police department, that political squabble can take everyone’s eye off the public safety prize.

But the last thing a city taxpayer wants is to throw good money after bad.

So it is important that a bipartisan group of Albuquerque city councilors — Republicans Brad Winter and Don Harris and Democrat Ken Sanchez — have asked the city auditor to review the performance of independent monitor James Ginger and his company, Public Management Resources, based in South Carolina.

Why it costs $25,000 to read a contract and check receipts is another question.

Since January 2015 city taxpayers have paid Ginger around $3 million to oversee reforms of the Albuquerque Police Department. The federal court approved a $4.5 million budget for the monitoring team for the first four years of the reform effort. DOJ had found Albuquerque officers too often used excessive force, which included police shootings, and outlined reforms in a settlement agreement with the city in late 2014. Since then Ginger and his team have filed periodic reports in federal court, outlining the status of APD’s efforts to become compliant with the agreement. The headlines show it hasn’t been an easy relationship:

“APD monitor: Payment delay slowed reform effort” June 24, 2015

“Federal monitor: APD policy changes too slow” March 18, 2016

“Monitor criticizes APD’s use-of-force investigations” July 1, 2016

“Court-appointed monitor rips APD’s excessive force reforms” Sept. 16, 2016 “APD’s use-of-force training ‘ineffective’” Sept. 29, 2016 “Latest report by monitor faults lack of scrutiny by APD brass” May 2, 2017

Many of the reports also credited APD with moving forward in some areas. After each public criticism, the city has responded by saying this is a multi-year process by design, changes have been and are continuing to be made, and the time lag between when Ginger looks at an aspect of APD performance and when his reports come out mean he is often publicly criticizing something that has already been addressed.

Harris points out “These federal monitors … tend to last a lot longer than they are supposed to. One of the reasons could be … that there is no real incentive for the monitor to wrap up because he’s getting $1 million a year.” And Sanchez emphasizes having Ginger here was a key component of the agreement, saying “I attended several meetings where Dr. Ginger … stated that he was going to have a presence in Albuquerque and he was going to relocate here.”

So Harris, Winter and Sanchez are right to want to ensure the public is getting exactly what it is paying Ginger for. According to federal court documents, Ginger and his team members are supposed to be on-site with Albuquerque police for a total of 800 workdays per year. The councilors say Ginger’s budget calls for him to be in Albuquerque 200 days a year but he’s spent an average of just 42 days here annually. Whether the discrepancy is the difference between Ginger being here and his team being here should not be that hard to discern, although Ginger says rules in the case mean he can’t comment on the councilors’ audit request.

Adding $25K to expedite a city audit of Ginger — an audit of the auditor, as it were — to the $3 million the public has already shelled out to him under the agreement and the $1.5 million it is scheduled to, adds a bit of insult to the purported injury. But his work is an essential component of a better police department for all Albuquerque residents, and we should be getting what we are paying millions for.