Fatal shootings was not the only issue facing APD

Payments to bereaved families was one of several concerns

Major reform of the Albuquerque Police Department was launched after the U.S. Department of Justice announced in 2014 that APD officers had a pattern of excessive force against civilians, including high numbers of shootings, as well as other complaints.

The DOJ investigation included a review of 20 police shootings over a four-year period and concluded that in many cases that level of force wasn’t justified.

But the public outcry and subsequent reform effort underway by Albuquerque police weren’t strictly related to the number of shootings. There were other issues as well. Among them:

■ In the years leading up to the DOJ’s findings, the city had paid out more than $23 million in settlements and court judgments in civil rights cases brought by the families of people fatally shot by APD and by people subjected to excessive force.

■ Family members of several people fatally shot by APD filed formal complaints with the DOJ asking for criminal civil rights investigations into the deaths of their loved ones prior to the investigation’s being launched in 2012.

■ The District Attorney’s Office procedure for reviewing police shootings before a grand jury was shown to be a “rubber stamp” when audiotapes of the grand jury were released to the Journal that showed officers were not questioned when their testimony was contradicted by physical evidence found in autopsies. That practice was changed in 2012.

■ State District Court judges in several civil lawsuits found APD officers’ testimony wasn’t credible because their testimony was contradicted by physical evidence. Those cases included those brought by the families of Kenneth Ellis III and Christopher Torres, who were shot and killed in 2010 and 2011, respectively.

■ In 2011, the Albuquerque City Council voted to request a DOJ investigation of APD’s use of force. That measure was vetoed by Mayor Richard J. Berry, who opted for an internal reform effort. The DOJ eventually launched its investigation the next year.

Albuquerque police, as part of the reform effort, developed a use-of-force policy that’s been approved by the DOJ and a federal judge, and the policy can be examined regularly through internal review boards created within the department as part of the reform effort.