Police reform came far too late for Kenneth Ellis, an Iraq war veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder who was shot dead by Albuquerque police in 2010 after he put a gun to his head in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven.

The 25-year-old was one of more than two dozen people shot dead by police in New Mexico’s largest city in the past five years, a torrent of killings that sparked public protests and a 16-month federal investigation. Last October, the Albuquerque police department agreed to make fundamental changes following the investigation, which looked into allegations of systematic brutality, unjustified shootings, incompetence and whitewashed internal investigations.

With police shootings under national scrutiny since last year’s events in Ferguson, Missouri, a settlement was announced on Tuesday between the US Department of Justice and Cleveland that will see the city’s police department take steps to correct a pattern of abusive behavior by officers, including being scrutinised by an independent monitor.

As with Cleveland, the Albuquerque agreement was prompted by a string of controversial incidents and calls for improvements in how police use force and interact with mentally ill people and the wider community.

Cleveland announces ‘a new way of policing’ after reports of chronic abuse . Guardian

But more than six months after Albuquerque and the DoJ announced they had reached a deal, and 13 months after the federal agency issued their damning report, activists caution that reforms have not been finalised and a fundamental shift in the police department’s culture remains a long way off.



Months before the agreement was struck between Albuquerque policeand the DoJ, the department committed to providing 100% of its field officers with crisis intervention training within 18 months.

But other changes will take several years, as the settlement’s enforcement is faced with legal and political challenges. The officers’ union mounted a legal challenge to the settlement, arguing they should be allowed to have input in proposed reforms. APD Forward, a group that calls itself a community coalition, is also seeking a stake in the process for civilians. Wrangling among city officials over the pay and accountability of the court-appointed monitor took place as recently as last week.

Will it all ultimately lead to fewer violent encounters between police and citizens? Kenneth Ellis’s father, also Kenneth, is hopeful but sceptical.

“I guess time will tell,” said Ellis, who is now an activist. “It still hasn’t had a chance to prove itself one way or the other … The only catalyst for real reform would be indicting officers that have blatantly committed murder.”

Ellis’s son was shot once in the neck. The family filed a lawsuit and the city agreed to pay nearly $8m to settle the case.

Ellis watched with alarm and disgust as controversies played out in Ferguson, Cleveland and elsewhere across the country. “Before Ferguson there was Albuquerque,” he said. “There needs to be an external accountability mechanism that’s not a man in blue. The police can’t police themselves, that’s obvious.”

Cleveland and Albuquerque: a tale of two cities

The DoJ’s findings in Cleveland bear many similarities to those in Albuquerque, where the police department was found to have engaged in an unconstitutional “pattern or practice of use of excessive force, including deadly force”.

In Albuquerque, most of the 20 officer-involved fatal shootings between 2009 and 2012 were found to be unconstitutional: “Officers used deadly force against people who posed a minimal threat, including individuals who posed a threat only to themselves or who were unarmed.”

They also determined that officers frequently misused Tasers on mentally ill people and that officers were rarely held accountable because of deficient internal procedures. On one occasion, “officers fired Tasers numerous times at a man who had poured gasoline on himself. The Taser discharges set the man on fire, requiring another officer to extinguish the flames.”

After negotiations, the settlement between the city and the Justice Department will see Albuquerque admit no wrongdoing or liability. But the police department will have to overhaul its use-of-force policies with the goal of reducing violent encounters through better training, oversight, accountability and community relations.

Among the protocols designed to ensure police use aggression only when necessary, the settlement called for officers to be banned from firing weapons at moving vehicles in most circumstances; for them to fill out a report if they point a weapon at a suspect even without firing; for neck holds to be prohibited except where lethal force is authorised; for officers to use only department-approved firearms and for Swat members to respond as a unit – not individually.



Peter Simonson, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, which is part of APD Forward, said that opinion is split in the city as to whether the federal scrutiny will make a difference. He is cautiously optimistic and believes that outside intervention represents the only chance for real change in a police department that has a long history of brutal conduct.

But he doubts it will be easy to counteract what he called “trends” in US policing: “militarisation, over-use of Swat teams to perform police functions that do not involve inherently dangerous situations, the growing mental health crisis in our community”, he said. “Too many officers have been trained to view the public at large as potentially dangerous, a threat, enemies in the field of combat as it were. I withhold judgment about how much this reform process is going to be able to reverse that culture.”

In January, two months after the settlement, murder charges were filed against two Albuquerque officers in the killing of James Boyd, a mentally ill homeless man whose death prompted protests. That was seen by activists as a positive step, but allegations of excessive force surfaced again one day later, with the shooting of Jacob Grant, an Albuquerque police detective who was shot up to eight times by a fellow officer during an undercover operation.

It was reported last week that Grant may launch a federal civil rights lawsuit.