As the Albuquerque Police Department grapples with a corruption investigation into its DWI unit—and what could have been done to catch misconduct earlier—the Second Judicial District Attorney’s Office is stridently refuting it has any share of the blame.
In a 15-page letter to the City Council detailing various policies and processes for court appearances, Chief Harold Medina wrote that “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 appearance.”
But in a statement released on Monday, the District Attorney’s Office said “this is simply not true and has never been true.”
“The Federal DWI investigation is about alleged misconduct by DWI police officers,” District Attorney’s Office spokesperson Nancy Laflin wrote in a statement. “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.”
Laflin had previously told City Desk ABQ that the District Attorney’s Office sends a form email to law enforcement agencies when their officers miss court. She said Monday that it’s a courtesy.
Corruption going back a decade
Officers Honorio Alba, Joshua Montano, Harvey Johnson, and Nelson Ortiz are being investigated along with defense attorney Thomas Clear, for allegations that they colluded to get DWI cases dismissed or did not file DWI cases to begin with. The Albuquerque Journal has reported that Lt. Justin Hunt is also under investigation. The officers are on administrative leave while the internal investigation unfolds.
No charges have been filed. Officials have said corruption within the DWI unit could go back a decade.
A City Desk ABQ analysis of cases where one of the officers under investigation made the arrest and Clear was the defense attorney found that 86% were dismissed, either because the officer had missed a hearing, missed an interview (or several) or the state did not turn over evidence to the defense.
In his first press conference addressing the scandal last week, Chief Medina provided additional data about APD’s DWI cases that were dismissed each year, dating back to 2015.
Starting in 2019, Internal Affairs began investigating all missed court dates. The percentage of cases that were dismissed greatly decreased after a New Mexico Supreme Court order suspended pre-trial interviews of officers.
Medina said he didn’t know yet if any of the five officers now under investigation were ever disciplined.
‘I can tell you that I have looked at some of the IA histories of these individuals and I’m not seeing a great pattern of sustained violations,” Medina said.
He did confirm that historically the DA’s Office notified APD’s Court Services unit when an officer missed a court hearing, but not if an officer missed a pre-trial interview or did not turn in discovery. As of March 2022, officers are no longer required to attend pre-trial interviews for cases in Bernalillo County Metropolitan Court.
Medina said APD stopped receiving notices in September 2022 “due to a system failure at the DA’s office” and “only recently started receiving the notices again.”
Laflin did not answer questions about what happened after September 2022 to cause APD to stop receiving notices from the DA’s Office.
Laflin said that although the DA’s Office does not have the obligation to ensure officers show up to court, it has “put in place an additional ROBUST notification system so APD will be aware when their officers miss court.”
In his letter to the City Council, Medina stated that APD has never had the ability to independently access the court system to check if officers were attending court hearings, but they finally gained that access in the last couple of weeks.
“We are now in the process of working with the court data to automate tracking of officer appearances,” Medina wrote. “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.”
Investigating the police
Meanwhile, the department has launched an Internal Affairs investigation into the DWI officers but it won’t be led by the Internal Affairs division.
On Friday, Medina announced he appointed Kyle Hartsock, commander of the Criminal Investigations Division, to head the team. Deputy Commander Ken Johnston and Deputy Commander Joshua Hawkes are working with him.
“So much of our great investigations come out of our violent crime section so I want to announce that Commander Hartsock will be the commander who’s in charge of this investigation,” Medina said. “The IA individuals involved will answer directly to a specific hand chosen chain that includes Commander Hartsock and a couple other deputy commanders—one that worked elsewhere before coming to the Albuquerque Police Department, and one that has no history within DWI.”
The major over the Police Reform Bureau—which oversees Internal Affairs—states on his LinkedIn profile that he worked in the DWI unit from 2011 to 2013. An APD spokesperson did not respond to questions about whether this played a role in the internal investigation being handled outside Internal Affairs.
Hartsock said the investigation’s goal is to ensure that anyone who was involved “in any part of this scheme” or knew about it but didn’t report it will be held accountable.
“As criminal allegations come up that we believe are new we will pass that on (to federal investigators), but our goals are different,” Hartsock said. “While they’re doing a criminal investigation that could result in charges our goals are to find out how this happened and who’s involved and make sure that they are held accountable. And that it doesn’t happen again.”
However, there are restrictions on what the department can share with federal authorities. For instance, interviews that were compelled under threat of termination cannot be used in criminal investigations. This is called a Garrity right.
Attorney Luis Robles, who has represented government entities and law enforcement officers, said the FBI and the US Attorney’s Office is very careful not to include any materials protected under an officer’s Garrity rights in their investigations.
“If an officer gave a compelled statement, a verbal statement, or if he was ordered to write a report on anything in particular, all of those would be Garrity protected,” Robles said, adding that if investigators unearth, for example, lapel camera videos or other documents, those could be shared.
The investigator
Before joining the Albuquerque Police Department three years ago, Hartsock worked for the Second Judicial District Attorney’s Office and the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office. A BCSO spokesperson said he served in the department’s DWI unit for two years, from November 2006 to December 2008.
Gilbert Gallegos, an APD spokesperson, said Hartsock is “a respected investigator who played a key role in overhauling APD’s investigations, developing the Detective Academy, and solving high-profile cases.”
“(Hartsock) has the trust of the public in terms of presenting the cases investigated by the Multi-Agency Task Force,” Gallegos said. “He has also worked closely with the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office on dozens of cases.”
Gallegos said the internal investigation has to be completed within 120 days. He said complaints will not be sent to the Law Enforcement Academy Board until after the internal investigation is done. That board has the power to revoke an officer’s law enforcement certification.