New Mexico Mercury

In a recent column on this site, Jewel L. Hall of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Multicultural Center called for greater action by citizens, elected officials, and the Albuquerque Police Department themselves to address the all-too-common occurrence of officers shooting suspects who are quite frequently unarmed.  I agree that more should be done, but I do think that Mrs. Hall is dramatically understating how truly atrocious the situation has become.



As she pointed out, not one of the shootings by APD officers since 2010 has resulted in discipline to the officer, but this is hardly a surprise; APD hasn't merely justified the last 34 shootings, but have managed to justify every police shooting for over twenty years.  The trend holds true for lesser complaints; of all excessive force complaints made by citizens against APD officers, barely over 3% result in disciplinary action (the national average is not much better at 8%, though that's still better than twice the local rate).  Beyond that, several of the shootings and lesser incidents that the department declared "justified" have resulted in successful civil suits by relatives that have cost the city and Albuquerque taxpayers millions, and -- as Mrs. Hall quite correctly notes -- will probably cost us millions more. And not only is the department turning a blind eye, but both the Associated Press and The New York Times reported two years ago that the police union had for more than twenty years actually been giving checks of between $300 and $1,000 to involved officers to "cover expenses" (or, as the Police Officers' Association president poorly explained it at the time, to essentially reward them with a vacation for shooting someone). I am unaware if this practice has continued, but can't help but be astounded that any rational person thought that it was a good idea in the first place.



Defenders of APD's "see no evil" discipline policy consistently try to paint Albuquerque as a violent city whose officers frequently find themselves in danger, but this requires one to completely ignore two points.  First - despite popular belief and a frenetic media culture - Albuquerque's violent crime rate is actually slightly below average for a city of our size, and incidents of violence against officers have been consistently and precipitously declining for nearly a decade despite an average increase of similar incidents nationwide over the same period.

Second, Albuquerque's incidents of police violence are far more likely to occur in situations when the officer's life is theoretically not in danger. In mid-2011 (sixteen shootings ago), APD commissioned a report on the 37 police-involved shooting incidents from 2006-2010; the report made several recommendations to reduce the number of shootings (which were mostly ignored), but also revealed the following disturbing information:


According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the US Attorney General's Office, 95% of police shootings nationwide occur at a distance of less than 21 feet (the minimum safe distance for drawing on a person with a knife or other non-firearm before they can close the range), and over 50% occur within less than 5 feet (grappling distance). In short, the overwhelming majority of officers in this country only fire their weapons at a suspect when their life is definitely in danger. Albuquerque officers, however, frequently do the opposite; only 13% of incidents occurred within grappling distance, and 30% of police-involved shootings at the time of the report's publishing occurred at distances of greater than 30 feet.  For that matter, only 34% of shooting victims at the time of the report were carrying a firearm (though a total of 68% were utilizing some form of weapon, including vehicles), and in 89% of the incidents, the officer or officers made no attempt to subdue the suspect in any other manner prior to shooting them.  More interestingly, only 1 incident in the report involved an officer firing at a suspect threatening a civilian.  The same report revealed that of 303 complaints filed by citizens against APD for excessive force of any kind between 2006 and 2010, only 10 resulted in any disciplinary action against the officer at all.  Indeed, officers are more likely to be disciplined for talking about their jobs on the internet than they are for casually ignoring the Constitutional and human rights of Albuquerque's citizens.



Between the habit of firing when not really in danger and the guaranteed exoneration - indeed the potential rewarding - of any officer for firing on any suspect, it's no wonder the perception among the citizens of Albuquerque is that APD shoots first and doesn't ask any questions at all.  This situation and APD's institutionalized refusal to confront it is an affront to the very citizens whom they are sworn to protect, and it's going to take far more house cleaning to solve the problem than merely hiring a new chief; for starters, I think that it's going to require an independent oversight board with actual teeth in the form of subpoena and indictment powers, an administration that is willing to stand firm in support of a strong chief, and a serious and open public conversation about the differences between protecting and serving the city and an absolutist "us against them" mentality.



This is a problem without an easy solution, and it is  a solution that will come neither easily nor quickly.  That it can be done I have no doubt; that it will be done is a question that we all have to answer for ourselves.