A few weeks in the past, Jose Vasquez discovered that former Albuquerque police officer Honorio Alba Jr. had pleaded responsible to taking bribes from a neighborhood protection lawyer in alternate for making DWI circumstances disappear. “I nearly fell out of my mattress as a result of I used to be watching the information that day, and I simply, I could not consider it,” Vasquez told KRQE, the CBS affiliate in Albuquerque. “I used to be like, there it’s. That is it. It did need to do with cash.”
Alexander M.M. Uballez, the U.S. lawyer for New Mexico, says Alba was simply certainly one of “many officers” who participated in a bribery scheme that started many years in the past and ultimately concerned almost each cop assigned to the Albuquerque Police Division (APD) unit charged with apprehending drunk drivers. For Vasquez, certainly one of 14 plaintiffs in a current lawsuit provoked by the corruption scandal, the information of Alba’s responsible plea definitively solved a thriller that started greater than 4 years in the past.
On a Sunday in September 2020, Alba stopped Vasquez for dashing on Paseo Del Norte Street in northeast Albuquerque. However as a substitute of merely writing him a ticket, Alba alleged that Vasquez was driving whereas intoxicated. Vasquez was dismayed by the accusation, since he had not been ingesting and actually had given up alcohol for well being causes.
Alba claimed he might odor alcohol on Vasquez’s breath, which was additionally unusual, as a result of each males had been sporting face masks as a precaution towards COVID-19. “I knew that I hadn’t been ingesting,” Vasquez instructed KRQE. “And I used to be like, ‘I’ve a masks on. How are you going to odor? You’ve a masks on, like what? How are you going to be smelling the odor of alcohol?'”
Sensing that one thing was amiss, Vasquez’s spouse started recording the encounter on her cellphone. “Do I seem like a drunk individual?” Vasquez requested Alba and Sgt. Nelson Ortiz, one other officer who would later be implicated within the corruption scandal. “You may all inform he is not,” his spouse added. However after Vasquez refused to endure area sobriety checks, Alba and Ortiz arrested him. And regardless that a breath check confirmed that Vasquez was not beneath the affect, they charged him with DWI, together with dashing, obstructing or evading an officer, and negligent use of a lethal weapon.
Compounding the puzzle, the officers suggested Vasquez to contact Thomas Clear, a lawyer they stated might prepare for the fees to be dismissed. Vasquez employed a unique lawyer, and in 2021 a choose discovered him not responsible of all fees apart from dashing.
Carlos Sandoval-Smith had an identical run-in with Officer Daniel Montaño in June 2023. In keeping with a lawsuit that Sandoval-Smith filed final October, Montaño stopped him for dashing, then “unlawfully expanded the scope of the cease by initiating a DUI investigation with out cheap suspicion that [Sandoval-Smith] was driving beneath the affect.” Montaño charged Sandoval-Smith with DWI regardless that he “carried out very properly” on area sobriety checks and a breath check put his blood alcohol focus properly under the authorized restrict. Like Alba, Montaño really useful Clear as a lawyer who might get DWI fees dismissed.
The motivation for these unusual encounters turned clear after the federal corruption investigation turned public in January 2024, when the FBI searched Clear’s workplace and the houses of a number of officers. Final month, Clear’s investigator, Ricardo Mendez, pleaded responsible to federal bribery, extortion, and racketeering fees. Montaño and Alba pleaded responsible to related fees on February 7, adopted by Clear himself final week.
“Since at the least the late Nineteen Nineties,” Clear stated in his plea settlement, he had been working what prosecutors name the “DWI Enterprise,” a scheme that concerned “nearly the complete APD DWI unit over a prolonged time period.” In alternate for money, “discounted authorized companies, reward playing cards, lodge rooms, and different items,” officers would both chorus from submitting fees towards DWI suspects or intentionally miss pretrial interviews, movement hearings, trials, or administrative driver’s license hearings. Primarily based on these prearranged absences, Clear would transfer for dismissal, permitting his purchasers to keep away from prosecution and preserve their licenses.
The lawsuit that Vasquez joined, which goals to signify folks victimized by the “DWI Enterprise” as a category, describes how all of this labored from the angle of drivers who had been pulled over by Alba and his colleagues. The plaintiffs embody three different drivers who declined to rent Clear, all of whom say they had been arrested for DWI with out possible trigger.
In August 2023, for instance, Pedro Gonzales ran out of fuel whereas driving from Socorro, New Mexico, to his house in Albuquqerque. Montaño stopped and approached Gonzales, who stated he had drunk “two beers” in Socorro. Unhappy by Gonzales’ efficiency on roadside sobriety checks, Montaño arrested him for DWI. However in response to the criticism, Montaño “by no means deliberate on really prosecuting” Gonzales. As an alternative, Montaño took Gonzales house, retained his driver’s license, and gave it to Mendez, who known as Gonzales the subsequent day.
For $8,000 up entrance or $10,000 later, Mendez stated, Gonzales would get his license again and his case can be dismissed. Gonzales “determined to tell federal regulation enforcement of the extortion.” His DWI cost was in the end dismissed in January 2024, across the time that information of the FBI investigation broke.
The opposite named plaintiffs inform related tales. Officers would retain their licenses or different private results and provides them to Mendez as an incentive to rent Clear. Mendez would provide Clear’s assist in alternate for a money charge of $6,000 to $10,000. Whereas these drivers all turned Mendez down, the plaintiffs additionally embody 10 unnamed people who accepted his provide.
Clear and Mendez stored the racket going with the assistance of senior APD officers, who recruited new members and agreed to be sure that nobody interfered with the “DWI Enterprise.” As they moved up within the ranks, former members of the DWI unit—together with the commander of the division’s inner affairs division, his deputy, a lieutenant who likewise was presupposed to be rooting out abuse and corruption, and two different lieutenants—had been ready to ship on that promise.
The lawsuit, which alleges a number of violations of state and federal regulation, argues that none of this might have occurred if town had correctly educated and supervised its officers. Along with town, the defendants embody Clear, Mendez, Alba, 13 different present or former cops, and Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina. The lawsuit additionally names the Bernalillo County Board of Supervisors and the New Mexico Division of Public Security as a result of Clear and Mendez have stated they bribed staff of the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Workplace and the New Mexico State Police in addition to the APD.
“On info and perception,” the criticism says, town and Medina “knew of the settlement between Defendant Officers and Defendants Clear and Mendez.” It isn’t clear whether or not that’s true. However it’s truthful to say that Medina ought to have recognized what was happening. He joined the APD in 1995, shortly earlier than Clear says the “DWI Enterprise” bought began. Medina has held senior positions for greater than a decade and has run or helped run the division since 2017. As chief, he assigned former DWI officers to inner affairs, placing foxes answerable for the henhouse.
In keeping with the lawsuit, the APD’s Courtroom Providers Unit was supposed to maintain observe of officers’ appearances at legal and administrative proceedings however manifestly failed to take action. It says town and Medina “ratified the conduct of Defendant Officers by failing to intervene after receiving a number of notices that Defendant Officers had been violating the regulation.” In December 2022, for instance, the APD bought a tip that DWI officers, together with Alba, had been getting paid to be sure that circumstances had been dismissed.
The truth that a number of drivers reported their disturbing encounters with cops and Mendez to the FBI somewhat than the APD suggests they didn’t belief native authorities to look into the scenario. With good purpose, says the lawsuit, which alleges that Medina “didn’t adequately examine” proof of irregularities till an FBI probe compelled him to take action. In keeping with Medina, who has repeatedly promised to “be sure that we unravel this,” he had no clue that something was amiss till he was briefed on the FBI investigation in October 2023.
Town and Medina have declined to touch upon the lawsuit. But it surely raises severe questions in regards to the insurance policies and practices that allowed such pervasive corruption to go unnoticed for so long as it did.
“The way in which that town has responded thus far is kind of taking a victory lap, saying we stopped it, however not saying why it occurred,” Taylor Smith, one of many attorneys who filed the lawsuit, instructed KRQE. “And that is the issue. And if our personal management is just not keen to take accountability and be sure that the change occurs, then we want new management.”
