APD got a tip in 2022 that DWI officers were being paid to get cases dismissed. Its review did not find wrongdoing. 

In December 2022, the acting sergeant of the Albuquerque Police Department’s Criminal Intelligence Unit got a tip about officers in the DWI unit getting paid “to get a case dismissed.”

The sergeant started gathering information but — after looking through officer activity — didn’t turn up any evidence, according to a five-page “intel file” that was released to City Desk ABQ in response to an Inspection of Public Records Act request.

Then, a little over a year later — on Jan. 18, 2024 — the allegations became public when the FBI raided the homes of some officers and the office of defense attorney Thomas Clear III. 

Since then, Honorio Alba — who was named in the tip — Joshua Montaño, Harvey Johnson, Justin Hunt, and Nelson Ortiz have resigned while under an investigation that APD said centers on whether they “committed felony crimes by working with a local attorney and unlawfully accepted money and/or other compensation in return for dismissing or failing to file DWI charges.” 

No one has been charged, but the case has called into question how long the alleged scheme has been going on, who knew about it and whether anything could have been done to catch it earlier. 

Gilbert Gallegos, an APD spokesperson, told City Desk ABQ the only people who were told about the allegation in December 2022 were the commander of the Investigative Services Division — who signed off on an investigation into the tip — Chief Harold Medina and the then-deputy chief over the Criminal Investigations Bureau. 

Gallegos said the chief did not tell the FBI about the allegations since the investigator didn’t turn up any evidence, but he “took additional actions that he can’t discuss at this point.”

“The chief didn’t want to do anything that would tip off any individuals who might have known about this,” Gallegos said. “They wanted to wait and see if they could get more or if something else popped up, basically. He put things in motion to see if that happened.”

Then, in October 2023, the FBI told the chief they had some information. Three months later, the federal investigation came to light.

Initial probe

The intel file was created when the investigation began in December 2022, Gallegos said. He said after the initial investigator was promoted, a different detective took over but “kept his chain of command informed on the status.” 

“When the allegations were relayed from the FBI, the detective was asked to update the file with documentation of the work that was initially done,” Gallegos said. “So that part of the report was dated January 2024 when he provided that information.” 

The investigation narrative is dated six days after the FBI raids. 

After the raids, APD launched a formal Internal Affairs investigation into the five officers. It has said that the goal is to ensure that anyone who was involved in the scheme — or knew about it but didn’t report it — will be held accountable. Two members of APD’s Internal Affairs Division are now also being investigated.

Gallegos said it’s not common for APD to open an intel file like this — before the department has enough information to open a formal investigation — and they can be used to look into criminal allegations against an officer.

No “obvious indicators”

In his 2022 memo that kicked off the probe, Acting Sgt. Jon O’Guin wrote to Cmdr. Aaron Jones that he was “recently contacted by a concerned citizen that wished to remain anonymous.” The memo has been redacted to remove identifying information, Gallegos said.

“DWI officers described how some members of the unit, specifically mentioning Officer Alba, would get paid (redacted) to get a case dismissed,” O’Guin wrote. “Details for how the case was compromised was not discussed, however (redacted) were involved in paying the DWI officers.”

O’Guin requested, and then received, permission to “gather intelligence on the above mentioned individual/organization to identify further criminal activity or other parties involved.”

Although the initial tip had included an allegation that officers were getting paid to get cases dismissed, Gallegos said no lawyers were mentioned. Instead, the allegation involved three Northeast Albuquerque restaurants or bars who a tipster said were alerting officers about their patrons as they drove away. That turned out not to be true, Gallegos added.

“They were targeting individuals, who then could get their cases dismissed,” he said the tipster reported. “So they would arrest and charge them and then get their cases dismissed and there would be some sort of payment for that.”

According to the narrative, in December 2022, O’Guin began checking the activity of the seven officers who were on the DWI unit at that time, including Alba, Johnson and Montaño.

That month the “activity did not show any obvious indicators that would match the allegations of the information received for the initial complaint in regards to increased activity in the areas of the three locations mentioned in NE Albuquerque,” O’Guin wrote. “All officers’ CAD activity showed what would appear to be normal traffic stops and requests for assistance responses across the city.”

He determined that the same was true for the previous two months. 

Gallegos said the investigation had been complicated by the fact that it involved officers within the department and therefore “they had to be very careful about who knew and who didn’t know even about the allegations.”

“After the FBI talked to the chief — I think it was a month later — they found out that the complaint came in from the court to the (Civilian Police Oversight Agency),” Gallegos said. “It should have been sent to our criminal investigators, but CPOA sent it to Officer Alba. So that kind of forced the hands of the FBI, I think.”