In 1998 the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico brought in Jerry Galvin to take over the police department after a series of questionable shootings and SWAT incidents moved the city to commission an outside investigation. In one incident that made national news, one SWAT officer said to his colleagues, “Let’s go get the bad guy,” just before the team went to confront 33-year-old Larry Walker. The “bad guy” wasn’t a terrorist, killer, or even a drug dealer, but depressed man whose family had called the police because they feared he might be contemplating suicide. The SWAT team showed up in full battle attire, including assault rifles and flash grenades. They found Walker “cowering under a juniper tree,” the New York Times later reported, then shot him dead from 43 feet away. The city brought in Sam Walker, a well-regarded criminologist at the University of Nebraska, to evaluate the police department’s use of lethal force. Walker was astonished by what he found. “The rate of police killings was just off the charts,” Walker told the Times. The city’s SWAT team, he said, “had an organizational structure that led them to escalate situations upward rather than de-escalating.” The city then brought in Galvin, who immediately disbanded the SWAT team, toned down the militarism, and implemented community policing policies. Galvin told the Times, “If cops have a mindset that the goal is to take out a citizen, it will happen.”

But the reform-minded Galvin didn’t last long. He was an outsider, and clashed with the city’s higher-ranking career cops. When new mayor Martin Chavez took office in 2001, he dismissed Galvin and appointed former APD officer and ex-police union president Gilbert Gallegos. Things quickly returned to business as usual. Within a few years, the stories about excessive force and corruption returned, including alleged abuse in the city’s jail, during traffic stops, and at protests. In 2003, a story broke about thousands of dollars worth of cash and property that had gone missing from APD evidence rooms. The officers who blew the whistle on the story alleged that Gallegos and other APD brass refused to investigate, then set their sights on the cops who came forward.

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The deputy police chief who oversaw the evidence room at the time, Ray Schultz, left to take a position with a police department in Arizona, but was then inexplicably brought back to Albuquerque as police chief in 2005. Schultz stayed until last summer, when Mayor Richard Berry appointed Gordon Eden to replace him. Schultz in his tenure managed to oversee the recent dramatic rise in police shootings, preside over a series of sex scandals within the department, and win the wrath of the police union.

Eden has promised reform. But he has his work cut out for him. The police culture in Albuquerque will be difficult to change. One particularly poignant example concerns the city’s police union. In 2012, TV reporter Christina Rodda filed a lawsuit against the city and against Officer Stephanie Lopez. According to Rodda’s lawsuit, she was covering a rave at a club called Tumbleweeds when she caught Lopez on tape getting rough with a teenager. Lopez then demanded that Rodda hand over the tape. Rodda initially objected. Lopez then confiscated the entire camera. If she had taken the camera because the video was evidence of some kind, she should have tagged the camera and taken it to the police station. Instead, according to Rodda’s lawsuit, Lopez took the camera home. Three days later, the camera was returned to Rodda’s employer, KOB. The incriminating video had been deleted. Rodda was able to recover the file with the assistance of a specialist. Lopez then had Rodda arrested. The charge — “criminal trespass” — was summarily dismissed by a judge.

How is all of this relevant? Well, when the DOJ report came out last week, the Albuquerque police union issued a statement from its president . . . Stephanie Lopez. Yes, the same officer who confiscated Rodda’s camera and returned it missing a video that may have depicted her own misconduct now heads the city’s police union.

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Lopez’s reaction to the report is interesting, too. From TV station KRQE:

Lopez says she finds the DOJ’s findings on less lethal force particularly upsetting. “The less lethal is there so we don’t get into the lethal encounters so, that’s the difficult part is, okay, so we’re wrong on both. We’re wrong when we use less lethal and we’re wrong when we use lethal force,” explains Lopez.

Lopez seems to think this is a Catch-22 for Albuquerque police. That in itself is revealing. The DOJ report was critical of APD officers’ use of both kinds of force not against people who presented an immediate threat, but against people who presented no threat to the police and no threat to anyone else, save perhaps for themselves. Lopez seems oblivious to the possibility that not using force at all against such people would even be an option. Her reaction would seem to support the argument that in too many police departments today, cops just aren’t trained in deescalation or conflict resolution. It’s all about force.

A few other lowlights from Albuquerque in recent years:

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If there’s a lesson to be drawn from all of this, it’s about the importance of political oversight of police agencies — and how little that tends to factor into mayoral elections. (The recent mayor’s race in New York City is a notable recent exception.) In most cities, mayors appoint police chiefs. The right choice for that position can dramatically alter the trajectory of a city’s police force. Mayors also often negotiate issues like accountability and transparency with police unions. In some cities, they appoint members of civilian review or other oversight boards.

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