By: ABQRAW staff
Posted: 02/05/2024 @ 3:00PM
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Albuquerque –
Last Friday, the Albuquerque Police Department Police Chief held a press conference announcing an internal investigation into allegations of wrongdoing by current and past DWI officers. The press conferences that followed took a bizarre turn when Chief Medina began blaming other agencies, and he even became short with members of the media when pressed regarding the handling of the DWI scandal.
Ever since the DWI unit scandal broke, following the FBI’s witnessed raiding of houses, the media has been subjected to top city administration redirecting blame at anyone other than themselves. APD seems to blame everyone except their own top leadership. We have heard from city officials that the city council is responsible, the DA’s office is responsible, other agencies may be part of this, and even their own court services are involved. APD has been saying officers who miss court should go into a mysterious system that the DA’s office is in control of and that they track. The DA’s office says they have no such responsibility and only recently began tracking as a courtesy. The battle brewing between APD’s Chief Medina and the DA’s office got even more intense today when their Communications director, Nancy Laflin, released a letter stating:
In a letter dated February 1, 2024, to the Albuquerque City Council, the APD Chief of Police stated “the District Attorney’s Office currently has the responsibility to notify APD of missed appearances.” This is simply not true and has never been true.
The Federal DWI investigation is about alleged misconduct by DWI police officers. Instead of focusing on that issue, the Albuquerque Police Chief is blaming the District Attorney’s Office, the Law Office of the Public Defender, and the Metropolitan Court for the dysfunction and mismanagement of his DWI unit. He should refocus on putting things in place to prevent this type of disaster from happening again.
Although the District Attorney’s office has never been under any obligation to ensure officers show up for scheduled court appearances, we have put in place an additional ROBUST notification system so APD will be aware when their officers miss court.
The bottom line is holding accountable those people who are drinking and driving and the safety of our community.
This letter follows Chief Medina’s statements in media press conferences, where he asserted that the responsibility for missed court documentation lies with the DA’s office. An excerpt from Medina’s letter states:
Another shortfall in the criminal justice system has traditionally been the lack of
accountability for tracking missed appearances in court. The District Attorney’s Office
currently has the responsibility to notify APD of missed appearances. This
responsibility was recently confirmed, as Metro Court spokesperson Camille Baca was
asked why Metro Court did not follow the recommendation of the National Center for
State Courts to publish a list of cases dismissed for officers’ failing to appear. Ms. Baca
stated, “[t)he justice partner group in Bernalillo County at the time, instead, decided that
that recommended practice should be the responsibility of the District Attorney’s
Office.”
We stopped receiving notices in September 2022 due to a system failure at the DA’s
office. We only recently started receiving the notices again. In addition, APD has never
had the ability to independently access court systems to check on officer appearances.
We have gained access in the last few weeks. We are now in the process of working
with the court data to automate tracking of officer appearances. We recently received
access to search for officer appearances through the court system, but we don’t have
overall access to broadly track those appearances.
The City Council is meeting tonight for its regularly scheduled session, and Chief Medina was strongly encouraged to attend. On Friday, Medina told the media that he was consulting with legal experts and exploring alternative options, such as an executive session behind closed doors, away from public scrutiny.
When all is said and done, the court aspect of this case that everyone is arguing about and focusing on is only a small portion of the entire bigger picture. We will keep following this story closely.
PATREON Subscribers can read the DA’s Letter here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/da-letter-to-5-97931183?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link