TV reporter charged with impersonating an officer

Ruse allegedly relates to 4 Roswell incidents

A television reporter stationed in Roswell posed as a police officer several times in 2020 and was apparently very convincing, according to court documents.

The ruse allegedly included 27-year-old Cory King equipping his personal car with emergency lights and sirens, wearing tactical gear, a badge and a gun on his hip and blowing through stop signs and red lights while joining real officers conducting police business.

He even fooled other officers into believing he was a cop, court documents say. But he also made it easier for officers to file charges against him because he recorded some of these pursuits on a personal camera.

King, a reporter for KRQE-TV, is charged with four counts of impersonating a peace officer and two counts of reckless driving. All the charges are misdemeanors.

A criminal complaint says King impersonated an officer on four separate occasions between March and June 2020 by responding to police calls in his personal vehicle while having emergency lights activated, including one instance where he ran several stop signs and a red light. On one of those occasions, Chaves County deputies believed King was a State Police officer in an unmarked car and asked him to help stop traffic during a pursuit.

In another incident, King, dressed in tactical gear with a gun on his hip, allegedly followed a person he suspected of driving drunk to his home and blocked him in the driveway until deputies got there.

KRQE said in an online post on Wednesday that King has been suspended pending an investigation. A person who answered the phone at KRQE-TV Thursday said the station couldn’t comment further on the matter.

King was issued a criminal summons and is scheduled to be arraigned on Feb. 12, and it’s unclear if he has a lawyer. He could not be reached by phone Thursday.

According to a criminal complaint filed by State Police Agent Kai Perez in Chaves County Magistrate Court:

On March 27, King was in a vehicle with emergency lights when he joined a pursuit on U.S. 380 in Chaves County. After the pursuit, State Police Capt. Lance

Bateman told Perez that Chaves County deputies at the scene asked the person in the vehicle, which they thought was an unmarked State Police car, to stop traffic.

“Captain Bateman said there was no unmarked New Mexico State Police unit assisting with the pursuit and they later learned it was Mr. King’s vehicle being mistaken as a police unit,” the complaint says.

In April, a Roswell man was driving home when King got behind him, started flashing orange lights and followed him all the way to his house, blocking him in the driveway. The man told Perez that he thought King was in a police vehicle and that King got out of his car wearing tactical gear, a gun on his hip and a radio.

King was issued a citation for impersonating a peace officer by Chaves County deputies for this incident, but Perez wrote that it was never filed in court.

Agents interviewed King on June 25. He told them that he never told the man he suspected of drunken driving that he was a peace officer and that he activated his emergency lights “because he was scared.” He said he had just gotten done doing a security job and that’s why he was wearing a security guard uniform.

Agents executed a search warrant on King’s car and seized several electronic devices, including a GoPro camera King used to capture several pursuits. The camera had a video from May 5 with a caption that says “EnRoute to a shooting” where King is driving with lights and a siren activated.

Another video from June 4 shows King running through six stop signs and a red light during a pursuit involving the Roswell Police Department. He then got behind an RPD car to go around other vehicles yielding to law enforcement. RPD dash cam video shows King’s blue Ford Explorer with red and blue emergency lights on.