Albuquerque – Today a jury awarded seven Albuquerque police officers a total of $1.085 million. The case stemmed from an, on again, off again, police academy policy that required male cadets to razor-shave their heads each morning before class.
The city must now pay $155,000 in damages to each officer involved in the case. The lawsuit alleges, and was now proven that Albuquerque Police Department leaders retaliated against academy staff after the hito of an APD high ranking Chief Medina staff member was terminated from the police academy.
The verdict followed a rare seven-day trial at the 2nd Judicial District Court before Judge Joshua Allison. Numerous claims against the city are settled out of court. It is unclear why the city decided this case was worth taking to a jury.
Attorney Levi Monagle, who represented the officers, said Albuquerque Police Department leaders “fabricated” hazing allegations against the officers who terminated a top APD commander’s son while he was a cadet at the academy.
“This case begins with a lie and ends with the erasure of that lie by some of the highest ranking members of the Albuquerque Police Department,” said Monagle.
Attorneys for the city of Albuquerque responded that APD properly investigated a hazing incident in which the cadet was forced to shave his head in front of classmates, resulting in bleeding cuts to his head. The city attorneys argued that the case centered on an incident of harassment, NOT retaliation.
The whistleblower lawsuit alleged that APD leaders, including Chief Harold Medina, retaliated against the academy staff members following an Aug. 16, 2023, incident in which cadet Joshua Vega failed to razor-shave his head as instructed from the beginning of the academy to all male cadets. The practice of shaving heads goes back to the beginning times of APD cadet classes when they were considered militaristic. Medina maintains he wants more of a college campus setting in the academy and wants no part of military standards.
On the stand last week Chief Medina stated that he had nothing to do with the termination in the first place as it happened while he was on vacation with his wife and friends in Hawaii. Last week in court Chief Medina went into great detail about the two different types of lies an officer can commit. Only one type, a class 1 sanction could get an officer or in this case a cadet terminated. Medina insisted young cadet Vega was guilty of the lesser class 5 lying sanction not the more serious class 1.
Vega, son of then APD Commander George Vega, was allegedly forced to shave his head in front of classmates in the academy halls while other cadets did punitive calisthenics as a form of collective punishment and an act of solidarity.
Academy staff alleged that Joshua Vega lied to them about shaving his head on one particular morning. A staff member noticed the bushy head of Vega which led to his immediate termination from the academy after an internal decision discovered Vega lied. However the next day after Commander Vega made some calls to the vacationing Medina and other high ranking staff members, cadet Vega was immediately reinstated to the academy. We had reported about the incident when it happened.
Chief Medina also admitted that high level staff were told by the City Clerk and city attorney’s to routinely delete personal text messages and emails from city issued phones. Some argue this is illegal under state law and the city of Albuquerque has paid millions in deleted record cases.
At this time, Joshua Vega remains an APD officer and his dad George Vega has been promoted twice more since being re-hired to Medinas staff and is now a deputy chief at APD.
Attorney Monagle told jurors that APD commanders retaliated against the training officers after they sent a collective letter to Chief Medina alleging nepotism and asked that they be restored as academy staff members instead banished to the streets of ABQ as patrol officers.
In the academy staffs letter, the basic academy instructors said that Josh Vega was terminated because he admitted to lying about shaving his head, which they said is a “class-one” violation in their internal academy handbook and it was punishable by termination. Chief Medina on the stand told the court that cadets should not have different rights than actual officers. He reminded the court that just because you become a cadet doesn’t mean you give up your basic human and civil rights.
The harassment investigation was “pretextual, which is a nice way of saying fabricated,” said Monagle. “This was constructed by the APD command staff to silence and discredit the academy staff for reporting Josh Vega for his dishonesty.”
Monagle had asked jurors to award the officers $200,000 each for punishing them and re-assigning them to other departments at APD in retribution for sending the letter to Medina. Jurors did side with the academy staff officers but did not give them the full amount Montagle asked for.
Back in 2023 we reported that the seven officers received letters from Medina notifying them that they were the targets of an investigation into “alleged inappropriate conduct, to possibly include hazing, toward a cadet,” the suit alleged.
Three of the officers who filed the lawsuit Lisa Neil, Shane Treadaway and Sergeant Steve Martinez returned to work at the APD academy in January of 2024. Lisa Neil has since been promoted to Sergeant and is working the streets in the University command.
The other plaintiffs in the suit are Tillery Stahr, Alix Emrich, James Jacoby, and Kelsey Lueckenhoff.
We reached out to the represented officers attorney Levi Monagle and he told us:
“This whole case boiled down to speaking the truth in difficult moments. The Academy Staff told the truth in difficult moments; the APD command staff did not.”
“Chief Medina testified that our clients demonstrated ‘low-level’ knowledge because they ‘believed all dishonesties were the same.’ Our clients did ultimately believe all dishonesties were the same – even if they were committed by a commander’s son – and the jury agreed with them.”
“The eagerness of the APD command staff to bend over backwards to kiss Chief Medina’s ring in this case was pretty appalling – as was his testimony that he instructs all of his political appointees (commanders and above) to regularly delete their text messages.”
APD had already settled with two of these instructors a few years ago and the city has now had to pay them twice. Sergeant Martinez and Stahr reached a settlement with APD a few years ago stemming from a different incident at the academy.
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