This was not a great week for John Allen, the elected sheriff of Bernalillo County, New Mexico. “I’ve by no means been betrayed like this in my life, and I am fairly frickin’ pissed off proper now,” he introduced at a press conference on Thursday, hanging the lectern for emphasis. “I’m very indignant proper now.”
Why is Allen so indignant? On Monday, Undersheriff Johann Jareno, whom Allen described as “my right-hand man” on the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Workplace (BCSO), resigned at Allen’s request after he was implicated in a long-running, far-reaching police bribery scheme involving staff of three legislation enforcement businesses who took payoffs in change for making DWI instances disappear. The following day, Deputy Jeff Hammerel, whom Allen had positioned on administrative depart a month in the past after studying that the FBI was investigating him, pleaded guilty to federal bribery and extortion costs.
Hammerel admitted to conspiring with Albuquerque protection legal professional Thomas Clear, his paralegal, and “a supervisory BCSO deputy” (an obvious reference to Jareno) to assist Clear’s shoppers keep away from prosecution and maintain their driver’s licenses. In change for money funds, Hammerel would chorus from submitting DWI costs or intentionally miss hearings, pretrial interviews, or trials, permitting Clear to hunt dismissals based mostly on the arresting officer’s absence. That scheme, which additionally concerned the New Mexico State Police and practically each officer assigned to the Albuquerque Police Division (APD) unit charged with apprehending drunk drivers, started within the Nineties and continued by 2023.
The sheriff took one other hit on Wednesday when the Albuquerque Journal published a photograph of a beaming Allen together with his arm round Ricardo Mendez, who performed a central position in what prosecutors name the “DWI Enterprise” as Clear’s paralegal and investigator. Within the picture, which was taken throughout a February 2023 lunch at a Little Anita’s restaurant, Jareno is standing behind the sheriff and the confessed racketeer, his smiling face seen between them.
All of this sheds mild on the grievance that Allen vented a few weeks in the past in an interview with KRQE, the CBS affiliate in Albuquerque. Allen complained that the FBI had not stored him apprised of its corruption investigation, which turned public in January 2024 after brokers searched Clear’s workplace and the properties of a number of Albuquerque cops. “I am going to cooperate with you,” Allen mentioned, explaining his perspective towards the FBI, “however I haven’t got any extra belief in you.”
As Allen now concedes, it was truly the opposite approach round: In mild of his shut working relationship with Jareno and his chumminess with Mendez, federal investigators didn’t belief him. “Why did the FBI not belief Sheriff Allen?” he mentioned on the press convention, repeating a query he mentioned he had seen “in social media.” He answered that query with one other query: “How within the hell would the FBI ever belief me when my right-hand man, who speaks for me, [was a suspect]?” He added that “after all they’re gonna suspect me whenever you discover me in a photograph with this man”—i.e., Mendez, whom Allen known as “a chunk of crap.”
Allen was already nervous about his connection to Mendez throughout his February 12 interview with KRQE. “I used to be truly buddies” with Mendez, who “donated to my marketing campaign,” Allen mentioned then, and “I met with Tom Clear.” Allen anxious about “the notion that that they had entry to me,” saying, “it actually does bug me as a result of that notion is on the market.” On Thursday, he complained that native information shops had been “beginning to defame my character” and emphasised that appearances may be deceiving.
Jareno, who began working for the BCSO in March 2009 and served in its DWI unit from December 2011 to October 2019, “launched me to Mr. Mendez” in 2021, Allen mentioned on the press convention. Though Allen is a Democrat and Mendez is a Republican, Mendez preferred Allen sufficient to donate $200 to his 2022 election marketing campaign. (Jareno, for his half, donated $1,000.) Though “I am not gonna keep in mind precisely what number of instances I met with Mr. Mendez,” Allen mentioned, they’d focus on “my behavioral well being plan” and “what I used to be going to do concerning the crime downside” and “corruption,” which “in hindsight” is “very odd” as a result of corruption “was already right here.”
Allen, who took workplace as sheriff in January 2023 however had labored for the BCSO from 2001 to 2019, mentioned he had no inkling concerning the corruption in his workplace till the FBI investigation revealed it. “If I ever knew that Mr. Jareno and that Mr. Mendez had been doing what they had been doing,” he mentioned, “do you assume in all hell I’d ever have a lunch with him? No, I’d not.”
That lunch, which Allen mentioned Jareno “arrange,” occurred “three weeks into my time period,” he famous, and “it’s OK for me to have lunch.” As a “a politician and the sheriff,” he mentioned, he has a whole lot of lunches and poses for a lot of pictures. This explicit image, he emphasised, doesn’t imply “I’ve something to do with this DWI scandal.”
Allen mentioned he additionally was not conscious of Mendez’s prison file, which KRQE says “dates again to 1990” and features a felony conviction involving “greater than 60 kilos of marijuana,” which resulted in 18 months of probation. The Albuquerque Journal reports that Mendez additionally confronted a cocaine cost, which “was dismissed after prosecutors said he had furnished ‘data'” useful to an ongoing investigation. “Why would I ever ask if he had a prison conviction or his prison historical past if he was already a paralegal?” Allen requested reporters. “That is not one thing I’d ever assume.”
The lunch at Little Anita’s—throughout which Allen had pancakes however “did not eat all three of them” as a result of he “was full,” in case you had been questioning—could have been simply as harmless because the sheriff describes it. However Allen engaged in a little bit of revisionism when he mentioned, “I would not even name it a friendship,” referring to his relationship with Mendez. Simply a few weeks in the past, in any case, Allen volunteered that he “was truly buddies” with Mendez. Even when Allen didn’t “have something to do with this DWI scandal,” his belief in Jareno was clearly misplaced.
“It makes me sick to my abdomen…understanding he was that near me,” Allen mentioned. “I actually received sick and threw up in my rubbish can.”
Like Allen, Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina insists he had no clue concerning the corruption found by the FBI. Medina’s avowed obliviousness is difficult to fathom, since he first joined the APD in 1995, has held senior positions for greater than a decade, and has run or helped run the division since 2017.
In accordance with a lawsuit by drivers arrested for DWI, Medina “ratified the conduct” of corrupt officers by “failing to intervene after receiving a number of notices” that they had been “violating the legislation.” In December 2022, for instance, the APD received a tip that DWI officers, together with one who later pleaded responsible to federal corruption costs, had been getting paid to make it possible for instances had been dismissed. The investigation of that tip didn’t discover any proof of bribery. Nor did the APD beneath Medina maintain cautious observe of officers’ courtroom appearances, which could have revealed a suspicious sample of absences and dismissals in instances involving Clear’s shoppers.
Allen, against this, emphasizes that he has been working the BCSO solely since January 2023. However is it believable that he by no means caught wind of Clear’s racket throughout his 18 years with the BCSO?
Allen himself recommended that deputies who weren’t straight concerned within the scheme could have heard about it. “In case you ever knew something about this and also you did not do something to cease it, get the hell outta my company,” he mentioned. “Now we have an obligation to report…Now we have an obligation to intervene.”
The proof to this point means that corruption was much less pervasive within the BCSO and the state police than it was within the APD, the place it concerned “nearly the whole” DWI unit. Along with Hammerel, three APD officers have pleaded responsible to this point, together with Mendez and Clear. One other dozen or so officers—together with the previous commander of the APD’s inner affairs division, his deputy, three lieutenants, and a state police sergeant who had been lionized for nabbing drunk drivers—have been publicly implicated within the “DWI Enterprise.” Since that scheme goes again many years (“30 years,” in line with Allen), it may simply contain dozens of officers.
Allen defended his resolution to not conduct an inner investigation, because the APD did. “Everyone retains asking me about an inner affairs investigation,” he mentioned. “I am so sick of listening to that query. I cannot do something to intrude with the prison investigation [by] the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
Allen didn’t need to speculate as to what that investigation would possibly in the end discover. “Would I ever be shocked that anyone else can be named?” he mentioned. “I [wouldn’t] at this level, actually, by way of what occurred up to now earlier than I used to be right here after which what occurred months into my tenure….We have seen this factor blow up within the final 16, 17, 18 months. Nothing at this level actually surprises me anymore.”
In his KRQE interview, Allen appeared extra upset concerning the FBI investigation than he was concerning the corruption it had uncovered. However yesterday, he sounded appropriately involved concerning the latter. “This is not a black eye to the company,” he mentioned. “It is a intestine punch. It is a kick to my balls and two black eyes, to be trustworthy with you.” Public belief in legislation enforcement “is totally misplaced,” he admitted, “and we have now to rebuild it.”
