Medina and Keller

The APD scandal continues to reverberate as Chief Harold Medina again goes before the cameras to demonstrate that the department has a handle on what may be the ultimate political back breaker for Mayor Keller. But instead of clarifying the chief keeps digging a deeper hole.

At this point Medina has lost much of the audience as seen by the call for his resignation by ABQ City Councilor Louie Sanchez, a former cop. Although an avowed foe of Keller, the Sanchez call is likely a bellwether of what's to come. 

The Council wants the chief to appear at today's council meeting to answer questions but the administration is insisting that any such appearance be done behind closed doors. Yet another faux pas in a long line of them since the scandal broke,

With the help of APD watchdog and former Sergeant Dan Klein we compiled some questions arising from the latest official statements and news reports:

--A notable revelation came within a minute of Medina speaking at his news conference Friday afternoon. (Video here.) On January 23 he told the media that he went to the FBI with the allegations of a bribery scheme being operated by DWI officers. But Friday he revealed that “when this first came out we put out original information about the District Attorney calling me and then me calling the FBI. It may have been vice versa. The FBI may have called us and then I called the DA. It probably occurred that way.” 

--Medina either had his facts wrong or purposely misled the media and the public in an attempt to show he had his finger on the pulse. Clearly he did not. How hard is it for Chief Medina to know if the FBI told him about the investigation or if he told the FBI--an investigation by the FBI into your police department? The best case for Medina is that he is either incompetent with facts or he purposely misled the public to make himself look better.  

--The Journal comes with a detailed report on at least one person who reported being shook down by a member of the APD DWI Unit during a traffic stop. Was this shakedown recorded on the officer's body camera? If not, why do APD officers still have the ability to turn off their cameras during interactions with citizens? If it was on body camera, why didn’t the officer's supervisors catch it upon review? Is APD command fulfilling their duties to supervise as Medina promised months ago?

--The DWI officer waited ten weeks before sending a DWI citation to Metro court on the person he allegedly shook down. How did the prosecutor, the court, the DWI officer's supervisors not catch this and ask questions? Normally, a DWI offender is arrested at the scene and booked with a criminal complaint. Why wasn't the person arrested and a complaint filed on the night of the arrest? Waiting ten weeks to do so is extraordinary. 

--There could be hundreds of citizens who paid a bribe to get their DWI cases dismissed. Will the FBI interview them and will any of them face charges for paying the bribe? It appears there are some people who were not arrested for DWI and just agreed to the shakedown and went to the office of the attorney who was allegedly part of the scheme and paid the bribe. How many times did this happen? Did the DWI officers allow these drivers to continue driving that night? 

--What about the MVD hearings? When a DWI offender is arrested the officer seizes their driver's license. Not only does the offender have to face a criminal charge, but they also have to appear at an MVD hearing to determine if their license was seized in accordance with law. Police can lose a criminal case and still win the MVD hearing and get the license suspended. Were the officers and attorney involved in the alleged bribery operation also not showing up for MVD hearings? MVD does post notices about police missing their hearings just as the courts do. Obviously this is a task for the FBI to undertake in conjunction with the overall investigation. 

STUBBORN LEADERS

While Mayor Keller is stubbornly sticking by Chief Medina--even though he unceremoniously jettisoned Medina's predecessor Chief Mike Geier--MLG is doing something similar. 

Her controversial appointment of Teresa Casados, a top MLG political aide who served as her office COO, as director of the dysfunctional Children, Youth and Families Department (CYFD) was approved by what critics call a meek state Senate on a 32-8 vote with not one Democrat objecting.

That might be called party politics at its worst--refusing to look through a neutral lens and realize that the shortcomings of Casados are identical to that of Barbara Vigil who was appointed by MLG then failed at the job in short order because she also had no experience in child welfare. 

As much as the state wishes anyone heading up CYFD the best of luck, it takes much more than that to turn around a department that has 2,000 cases of child abuse in its backlog. Yes. That's 2,000, according to neutral court observers tasked with assessing the crisis at the agency. 

MLG is playing with fire, although unlike Mayor Keller, she is not seeking re-election. Still she is one child tragedy away from seeing her polling popularity plummet--if that's not already happening--and perhaps even having the agency run by the courts. 

The Governor said in an interview that the 2025 legislative session will feature "child well-being" that presumably would include CYFD reform which she has refused to have considered at this session. Why not now? Is 2,000 uninvestigated cases of abuse and neglect not enough?

The collapse of CYFD is an abysmal failure of executive leadership and that of the progressive Democratic women who have largely seized control of the Legislature and who are MLG's enablers. 

How is it that these legislators who we had such high hopes for and who are mothers themselves can turn their backs on the children of this state while they babble on endlessly about electric cars and clean fuel standards? How about cleaning up your own house before taking the broom to someone else's. Geez. . . 

CITY DESK 

Another nonprofit newsroom has popped up and joined a long list of such enterprises in the state. In many ways they've replaced the traditional daily newspapers as those continue to shrink or even cease publishing. 

This one is all digital and called City Desk. It's the brainchild of former ABQ City Councilor Pat Davis who already has four print publications under his ownership umbrella, including the Sandoval Signpost and the Corrales Comment.

CityDesk is aimed at the big city, publishing afternoon editions each weekday and covering the ABQ beat.

Like much local media they've been kept busy recently by the APD scandal.

The digital outlet has an experienced team of reporters, many of whom once toiled at local newspapers. 

Davis says City Desk, supported in part by reader donations, came about in large part because of cutbacks in newsrooms leading to less coverage of ABQ news. (That's also a national problem.)

While it would be hard to replace the legendary afternoon ABQ Tribune that went out of business in 2008, if City Desk can accomplish half as much as they did, they will be doing the town a favor. 

This is the Home of New Mexico Politics.