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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Years ago, former Albuquerque police officer Samson Costales used Mace to subdue a robbery suspect who was coming at him with a metal pipe.

The Mace worked. But another officer on the scene was dumbfounded, Costales said.

“Why didn’t you shoot him?” he shouted.

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Disgusted, the second officer threw the suspect into the back seat of a hot car.

A little later, back at the station, Costales gave the suspect, by then drenched with sweat, a Coke. As a result, officers teased him about the soft drink and chastised him for not shooting the man, “like it was an honor or something to kill them,” he said.

Costales was responding to a question put to him by Jack Cox, a junior at the University of New Mexico who moderated a question-and-answer session with the retired officer Thursday.

About 70 people listened intently as Costales presented an insider’s view of what the U.S. Department of Justice called a “culture of aggression” at the Albuquerque Police Department. It was that same culture that led to the department’s investigation, which found an unconstitutional use of excessive nonlethal and fatal force in 20 police shootings between 2009 and 2013.

Before Costales’ talk at UNM, the APD issued a brief statement: “We respect everyone’s right to have an opinion and share it with others. Our hope is that those who are most critical of our department will roll up their sleeves to be a part of the solution, in a productive manner.”

Costales was invited to UNM by American Studies professor David Correia for a class on police violence and social control. Correia was arrested last June after he and a dozen other activists briefly occupied Mayor Richard Berry’s office to protest police brutality. The charges were later dropped.

The federal investigation of the APD didn’t include the six people killed by police officers since January 2014, including the shooting death of homeless camper James Boyd in the Sandia foothills in March, before the report was released.

“I think I just witnessed a murder,” Costales recalled saying when he saw the video of the Boyd shooting.

Costales has spoken out against the APD before, including this year in a pair of scathing reports in two national magazines, The New Yorker and Rolling Stone.

He also testified against two Bernalillo County sheriff’s deputies who arrested Al Unser Sr. in 2006, an event Costales described in great detail Thursday. The deputies twisted Unser’s arm and threw him to the ground before arresting him, none of which was necessary or justifiable, he said.

After his testimony, he said, the police union posted a statement on its website calling him a rat and advising officers that, if he showed up at a scene, they should chase him away.

Since the DOJ report, Costales said he hears all the time about “the few bad apples” that mar the department’s reputation. In fact, he said, “there are more bad apples than good.” And those good apples are afraid to come forward to report police wrongdoing, he said. Since the federal report last year, the APD has been “putting on a show for the DOJ,” Costales said. “It’s all window dressing.”