Justin King

November 20, 2014

(TheAntiMedia) One of the officers that killed James Boyd is retiring early with full benefits and gets to avoid the Internal Affairs investigation by doing so. The local media in Albuquerque is trying to downplay his retirement by running headlines that indicate the exact opposite of the truth.

Officer Keith Sandy is the officer that made headlines and sparked outrage by stating he was going to shoot Boyd two hours before he did. He told a state law enforcement officer:

“For this fucking lunatic? I’m going to shoot him in the penis with a shotgun here in a second.”

Two hours later, Officer Sandy open fired and killed the man. Later the department tried to say that Sandy meant a Taser shotgun. Of course, Sandy didn’t shoot Boyd with a Taser. He opened fire and killed him while he was turning his back to the officers.

Boyd was indeed mentally ill. He had verifiable history of mental illness spanning more than a decade.

Now, Sandy is retiring early, getting his pension, and dodging an internal investigation. He will be paid 70% of his normal pay for the rest of his life. Boyd’s life is over.

Officer Keith Sandy is probably used to investigations by now. After all, he was fired by the New Mexico State Police amid fraud allegations, but there were no criminal charges. Seems he left that job just in the nick of time, too. Then he was hired by the Albuquerque Police Department who told the public he wouldn’t have a badge or gun and that he would just be a civilian employee. That was a lie. Sandy wound up with his finger on the trigger when he was placed on the Repeat Offender Project (ROP), a unit so violent it used a noose as its logo. To be clear, this is the same ROP team that the U.S. Department of Justice shut down because its officers were trigger happy. The Department of Justice put the Albuquerque Police Department in its crosshairs because the department kills more people per capita than any other place in the nation.

How can a department get away with behaving like this? It’s easy when the local media is willing to use misleading headlines to help cover up scandals. Once a real journalist named Alex Goldsmith of KRQE 13 broke the news that Sandy was going to get to walk away from the investigation with his pension intact, the local ABC affiliate ran the headline:

“James Boyd shooting: Retiring officer must participate in investigation”

It has a tag line that reads:

“Internal affairs investigation will determine if Sandy or Perez violated APD policies”

Officer Sandy does have to participate with the investigation until he retires on December 1st. That’s less than ten days from now. The shooting happened on March 16th. If the department can stall the investigation for eight months to protect the thin blue line, it’s unlikely that anything will happen in the next ten days.

They shouldn’t really need Sandy’s help though. APD cops have cameras that would have recorded the whole incident. Oh that’s right, Sandy’s equipment malfunctioned or was in for repair or his dog ate it or some other such lie. The point is that the video or audio recording doesn’t exist from the point of view of the officer that opened fire.

The video that does exist from another officer’s camera shows officers tossing a concussion grenade at Boyd who appears to be surrendering. After being attacked by the officers, Boyd pulls out a small knife, at which point officers use an attack dog on him and shoot him multiple times. Then as he is sprawled on the ground dying, he begs

“Please don’t hurt me anymore.”

The officers repeatedly shoot him with a bean bag gun.

The officers can be heard telling Boyd to drop the knife that he pulled when officers threw a grenade at him. Of course, the whole purpose of a concussion grenade is to

“disorient people and cause temporary blindness, deafness, and inner ear disturbance. These effects can lead to people becoming confused and result in a loss of coordination and balance.”

People with inner ear damage that are disoriented and confused typically can’t hear commands and because of the loss of coordination, couldn’t comply with the commands even if they wanted to. This is the danger in giving military equipment to officers who get their most advanced training by watching Die Hard. They misuse the equipment and kill people who are responding to their aggression.

In case you’re wondering what triggered the police involvement to begin with, Boyd was “illegally camping.” In other words, his only crime was being homeless.

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