Tuesday, April 15, 2014

This isn't enough.

Posted: Apr 15, 2014 6:04 PM EST  
Updated: Apr 15, 2014 6:04 PM EST

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - Half of the members (click here) of Albuquerque's Police Oversight Commission have resigned, citing a lack of independence and inability to provide any real citizen oversight of the troubled department.

The resignations Tuesday by three members of the civilian review board comes less than a week after the Department of Justice issued a scathing report on what it called excessive force and a culture of abuse and aggression at the department. Albuquerque officers have shot at 37 men since 2010, killing 23.

The report also criticized the city's oversight system and limited powers in investigating cases of questionable police conduct.

Oversight commission members Jennifer Barela, Jonathan Siegel and Richard Shine sent their letters of resignation to Mayor Richard Berry Tuesday. That leaves just three members on the nine-member panel, which had three vacancies.

Today the US Justice Department condemned fliers that were anti-police. That is all fine and good, but, those fliers reveal a profound fear of the authorities and the police. When are those that have committed murder going to be arrested and tried? The obvious evidence isn't enough?

By Radley Balko


...In 1998 the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico (click here) 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....

1998 to present is a long time to kill people without reason and simply because it is the best sport in town.
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