Lawsuit filed in killing of passenger by deputy
No one has accused Martin Jim of doing anything wrong on Nov. 17.
But he was shot five times and killed by a sheriff’s deputy, and then handcuffed and left facedown in the dirt for hours, said Sam Bregman, an attorney representing Jim’s family.
“It was like they had just shot a big-game trophy and they were very proud of it,” Bregman said next to a picture of the aftermath of the shooting. “That’s the dignity that they gave him.”
Bregman filed a lawsuit Tuesday on behalf of Shawntay Ortiz, Jim’s girlfriend and the mother of his 4-year-old son. The lawsuit says the deputy
who shot Jim acted recklessly.
The Sheriff’s Office declined to discuss the shooting or the lawsuit on Tuesday but said in a prepared statement that it will address Bregman’s allegations in court. The Sheriff’s Office previously has said the deputy fired the fatal shots because he feared for the safety of himself and a fellow officer.
Bernalillo County sheriff’s deputy Joshua Mora shot 25-year-old Jim, who was riding as a passenger in a truck fleeing law enforcement. Jim was riding in the rear driver’s-side seat of the truck that his friend Isaac Padilla, 23, was driving during the chase, according to the lawsuit and accounts from sheriff’s officials.
Jim and Padilla, who had known each other since high school in Gallup, were both killed.
Two other passengers were not hit and were not charged with crimes.
The lawsuit against Sheriff Manuel Gonzales and the Bernalillo County Commission was filed in state District Court and is seeking compensatory damages for Jim’s death.
Bregman said he expects Sheriff’s Office policies to be factors in the case. For example, the lawsuit says that not requiring deputies to wear on-body cameras has created a culture of excessive force.
“Somebody needs to remind the county commissioners that they hold the purse strings and it’s time to demand cameras,” Bregman said.
He also said use-of-force training practices and the pursuit policy will likely come up during the litigation.
“If (Mora’s) following training, what in the world are we doing out there on the streets when it comes to BCSO?” Bregman asked. “I think the light needs to shine a little bit on BCSO as well (as the Albuquerque Police Department), because we obviously got some cowboys that want to run up to trucks and just start shooting.”
Gonzales and Sheriff’s Office policies have caught the attention of several local civil rights advocacy groups after deputies fired their weapons at suspects nine times in less than five months. Five people were killed, and three were injured.
The Jim shooting was the last of those nine shootings.
He was shot after authorities in Albuquerque tried to stop Padilla because he was driving a truck suspected of being stolen and possibly linked to a burglary, Gonzales previously said. The vehicle fled into the North Valley, where deputies started chasing it and ultimately stopped it using a pursuit intervention technique near Glenrio and Coors NW, he said.
Mora approached the vehicle and fired into it seven times, striking Jim five times. Gonzales said deputies heard a revving engine before the shooting and feared they would be struck by the truck.
“At no time did Martin Jim objectively pose a danger to anyone, nor did he present any threat of deadly force to Mora or any of the deputies on scene that morning,” the lawsuit says.
The Sheriff’s Office never accused Jim of committing a crime. Sheriff Gonzales has said Mora fired his weapon because he “feared for his safety.”
Bregman said deputies told Jim’s family he was in the “wrong place at the wrong time.”
Deputy Felicia Maggard, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s Office, said that Mora, the son of Undersheriff Rudy Moya, has returned to active duty.
“Letting deputy Mora stay on the streets makes this community more dangerous,” Bregman told a news conference.
Maggard said the multijurisdictional investigation into the shooting is ongoing.
“We respectfully ask the public to wait for all evidence to be available through the judicial process before being tried in the court of public opinion,” she said in an email.
Michael Patrick, a spokesman for District Attorney Raúl Torrez, said that the office will not review the shooting and consider charges against Mora because of conflicts of interest between prosecutors and the people involved in the shooting.
Bregman said Jim’s family wants the Attorney General’s Office to review the case and, he said, prosecute Mora.
Bregman earlier this year represented former Albuquerque police detective Keith Sandy, who, along with another officer, was charged with murder for the fatal shooting of James Boyd, a homeless man camping illegally in the Sandia foothills. He was shot after he at first appeared to be surrendering, but then pulled two knives when officers fired a flash-bang device at him.
The trial against the officers ended in a mistrial, and the case was later dismissed.
Bregman said that unlike Boyd, Jim didn’t have a weapon, hadn’t threatened police officers, didn’t have a track record of attacking police officers and had not committed any crime.
“I have a pretty good understanding of police shootings. … I know a good police shooting when there’s a good police shooting … and I certainly know when there’s a bad police shooting,” Bregman said. “This police shooting is horrific.”