NM’s secret payoff in Omaree case isn’t accountable to public
The city of Albuquerque agreed in 2015 to pay $5 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the family of James Boyd, a mentally ill homeless man who was shot and killed by Albuquerque police a year earlier in the Sandia foothills. It was a case that made national headlines and ultimately led to the criminal prosecution of two police officers that ended in a hung jury.
That same year, the city agreed to pay $6 million to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit over the 2011 shooting death of Christopher Torres, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and was fatally shot in his own backyard when APD detectives in plainclothes confronted him while serving a warrant connected to a road rage incident. The Torres case also was the subject of national media reports about Albuquerque police shootings.
In both cases, the dollar amounts paid by our government provide a measure of public accountability and an insight into the degree of misconduct by state and local agencies and their employees. They also tend to promote positive systemic examination and change. Sadly, nothing gets the attention of politicians and elected officials like having to explain why they spent millions of taxpayer dollars on their mistakes.
Which brings us to another high-profile case that attracted national media attention: the beating death of Omaree Varela — a 9-year-old boy who had languished in an abusive home as the Children, Youth and Families Department failed to adequately investigate and take action to protect him. Moreover, when the boy called 911 for help six months before he died in 2013, the APD officers who responded didn’t listen to the call before visiting the home and concluding his was a “nice family.”
On Dec. 27, 2013, Omaree was found dead in the home, brutally beaten, with injuries to the head, chest, abdomen, back, right and left forearm and knee, mid-right shin and tongue. His body also showed signs of prior physical abuse, including burn marks and bruises.
Both Omaree’s mother and stepfather were convicted and sentenced to prison. Four APD officers were disciplined and one was fired for failing to respond properly to earlier calls of possible abuse. And a lawsuit was filed against CYFD accusing social workers of failing to exercise professional judgment and bungling their oversight.
Unlike the Boyd and Torres cases, the total amount paid to resolve the lawsuit — to be divided among the three surviving children of Synthia Varela-Casaus, who said of Omaree “I kicked him the wrong way” — remains cloaked in confidentiality and confusion. The settlement was reached after two years of litigation in which the state argued there was no culpability or liability.
State Risk Management Division officials refuse to disclose the amount paid, citing an order by state District Judge Nancy Franchini of Albuquerque sealing the settlement details. The specific reasoning for that is unknown because the sealing order is itself sealed.
There had been a request to seal guardian ad litem reports and amounts paid to protect the minor children from “predation by the public.” But the children — two minors and one adult — were never identified by name, only by initials. The money was paid to a trust to be held and distributed by a trustee for their benefit. Presumably all that would be subject to future oversight by the court, if required. While there are valid concerns about protecting minors, that would seem to be adequate protection from public “predation.”
What’s important is the balancing of interests here. Keeping the cost of the state’s negligence in a case like Omaree’s secret forever — how Risk Management as a practical matter is interpreting Franchini’s order — is a disservice to transparency and public accountability.
For better or worse, our system compensates victims with money. That means the settlement in a case like this is an important gauge of the negligence involved by public employees. The people who pay the bills and decide who runs our government are entitled to the truth.