A Perspective on Police Use of Excessive Force

I. A Brief Look at the Albuquerque Police Department's Deadly Use of Force
"In the five years before Christopher Torres, a 27-year-old with schizophrenia, was shot to death, the Albuquerque Police Department (APD) shot thirty-eight people, killing nineteen of them. More than half were mentally ill. In Albuquerque, a city of five hundred and fifty thousand, the rate of fatal shootings by police is eight times that of New York City." Although the crime rate has been declining for nearly a decade, the city still ranks in the top fifteen percent of the country's cities for the use of excessive force. [1]

The APD has accepted officers from other police forces, even if they had been disciplined or fired, and it has sometimes waived the psychological exam. There have been cadets who had admitted to crimes and had been repeatedly disciplined in previous jobs. Of the sixty-three officers who joined the APD in 2007, ten eventually shot people. Since 1987,  APD officers have shot at least a hundred and forty-six people. [2]

David Correia, a professor of American studies at the University of New Mexico, told the reporter, Rachel Aviv: "There's this myth here of tri-cultural harmony -- indigenous people, Mexican-Americans, and Anglos -- but this precarious arrangement is built on a long history of violence against Spanish-speaking and indigenous people that still plays out." "When these people don't follow the officers' orders, they are sometimes beaten or shot." A former police officer told Aviv that there was a running joke within the department: "Don't threaten suicide with officers, because they'll accelerate it." Samson Costales, a retired officer with APD, told Aviv: "They tell us to cover for each other, because we are a brotherhood and brothers in blue don't like rats," a mentality that he had learned from his training officers. Until recently, officers were also permitted to come to work with guns that they had bought themselves.

In thirty years, no officer in Albuquerque had been indicted for shooting someone, until the three years it took District Attorney Kari Brandenburg to charge the officers who killed Christopher Torres. She based her decision on the police department's internal report, which was finally released to the Torreses' lawyers, Randi McGin and Kathy Love, in 2013. Christopher was shot to death on April 12, 2011.

Shortly after the civil trial originated by the deceased Christopher's lawyers had ended, the Department of Justice published a report detailing how the APD fostered a "culture that emphasizes force and complete submission over safety."

II. APD Tasering Ruled Unconstitutional
In April 2016, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that two Albuquerque police officers can be sued for using a stun gun, called a Taser, on a suspect who suffered from mental illness and later died. Jerry   Perea was tasered ten times in less than two minutes. The court ruled that the Tasering constituted excessive use of force and was unconstitutional. [3]

ADDENDUM: ABQ Taxpayers Pay Big for APD Officer's Misconduct - Four lawsuits have cost Albuquerque taxpayers a total of $7.225 million, with the largest settlement being for $6.5 million. [4]

Footnotes
[1] Rachel Aviv, "Your Son Is Deceased," The New Yorker, February 2, 2016.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Dennis Domrzalski, ABQ Free Press, April 6-19, 2016.

[4] "ABQ Free Press Local Briefs," April 6-19, 2016.