A protester blows smoke into the face of an Albuquerque Police Officer at Central and Yale during a free flowing protest march against APD on Sunday, March 30, 2014.(Greg Sorber/Albuquerque Journal)

The former records custodian for the Albuquerque Police Departmentfiled a whistleblower lawsuit Monday against several high-profile employees of the city of Albuquerque and its police department that claims he was forced by the police department to hide information from the public and was fired because he reported the misconduct.

Reynaldo Chavez, who was APD’s records custodian for four years before he was placed on leave from his position in April and subsequently fired in August, filed the suit, which claims the city violated the New Mexico Whistleblower Protection Act and breached Chavez’s contract.

In the lawsuit, Chavez argues that city leaders – specifically APD Chief Gorden Eden, Assistant Chief Robert Huntsman, supervisor Bill Slausen and former City Attorney Kathryn Levy – directed him to circumvent Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA) law regarding several cases. The city of Albuquerque and APD are also named as defendants in the suit.

Chavez said in September in a notice to file the lawsuit that he was told to find “creative exceptions to prevent the production of records” by the defendants named in the lawsuit.

If Chavez’s claims are true, the misconduct would be blatant violations of public records law by some of the city’s top brass.

ALLEGED PUBLIC RECORDS RULEBREAKING BLATANT

In the lawsuit filed Monday, Chavez says that city and APD brass would decide which IPRA requests were “high profile” and would be directed for him to handle. Media requests, civilian requests and requests from lawyers were handled by two subsidiaries of his, as well as three employees contracted by APD from Select Staffing, Inc.

Some of the high-profile cases he handled were the Mary Han case, cases involving Bernalillo County District Attorney Kari Brandenburg, APD use of force cases, APD officer-involved shootings – including the James Boyd case, the Jaquise Lewis case, the Cedric Greer case and Jacob Grant’s, among several others.

The lawsuit says Chavez would have to gather all the records for those cases from multiple departments, then was required to seek approval from higher-ups to release the documents, even though they were required to be released under IPRA law.

The suit says the defendants would then tell Chavez to deny, withhold, obstruct, conceal or destroy records from being produced for various reasons.

Among the ways the lawsuit says the skirting would happen: Chavez would be told to deny requests without reason. It says Levy “frequently stated simply, ‘there are items we just will not release and we will just pay the fines or lawsuits.'”

At other times, the suit says, APD or city brass would tell Chavez to “creatively identify an allowable exception” to IPRA “in an effort to ‘baffle’ or frustrate the requester,” – and even try to find exceptions to the law to “arbitrarily delay…without justification” or altogether deny requests.

In one instance, according to the suit, Chavez was told by brass to overproduce materials to force requesters to sift through unnecessary material. Levy once told Chavez to give a KRQE reporter a box of records having nothing to do with her request in regards to the Department of Justice’s investigation into APD, according to the lawsuit.

Another portion of the lawsuit says APD and city brass chose when and to whom certain records would be released – often sending out “high profile” records to requesting parties and select media organizations just before weekends or holidays.

“Such coordination was designed to take advantage of reduced media exposure regarding the released materials,” the suit reads.

LAWSUIT MENTIONS SPECIFIC HIGH-PROFILE CASES

Chavez’s lawsuit goes on to cite specific high-profile cases in which APD and city brass specifically and blatantly broke public records law by ordering him to only released portions of the material required to be released under law.

Among those cases were the James Boyd shooting, former Chief Ray Schultz’s relationship with TASER International, public protests following the Boyd shooting in which plainclothes officers filmed citizens tied to previous officer shootings, Mary Han’s death and IPRA requests from civilians Silvio Dell-Angela and Charles Arasim – both who are often critical of APD.

In each case, Chavez says Eden and/or Levy, along with others, specifically directed him not to release certain documents or information that should have been released under IPRA law.

Chavez says he told the defendants that those actions would be in violation of the law and feared any legal matters that would come from breaking them would come back to him, but was allegedly told to do so anyway.

He signed a sworn affidavit in August saying he believed all the records relating to the Han case had been destroyed since the database was out of his possession.

SUIT CLAIMS PURPOSEFUL ENCRYPTION, SKIRTING OF DOJ

Chavez also chalks the brass’ actions up to “political calculations” in the lawsuit, saying they regularly tried to skirt IPRA law in order to not shed bad light on misconduct by city personnel or lose pending lawsuits against the city, among others.

The suit also says they purposely encrypted audio and video so requestors could not access the records given to them and even concealed records from the U.S. Department of Justice, which did and continues to investigate the Albuquerque Police Department under a settlement agreement.

CHAVEZ’S TEAM HAD ISSUES; HE CLAIMS HE WAS COLLATERAL DAMAGE   

Chavez was one of three employees from the police department’s public records division who was placed on leave in April. APD said at the time it was looking into allegations of unprofessional conduct, workplace safety and inadequate supervision involving Chavez and the two others.

But Chavez said at the time he had butted heads with his supervisor. His attorney at the time said she believed APD had violated his due process rights in its investigation into him.

Monday’s filing says the other two workers and three other contracted employees had multiple instances of repeatedly calling in sick without doctor’s notes, typographical errors in responses to requests, and having sexual relations with APD personnel, among others that caused him concern.

The suit says Chavez met with one of the contracted employees to tell her she needed a doctor’s note for a sick day. Hours later, the suit says, she complained to APD’s Force Investigation Team that Chavez had verbally, physically and sexually abused her.

Shortly thereafter, according to the suit, Chief Eden placed him on administrative leave.

A subsequent report on the investigation into the matter found Chavez tolerated sexual harassment among his subordinates and ridiculed APD, among other findings Chavez and his lawyer call “unsubstantiated.”

He was fired Aug. 20 and Javier Urban was named acting records custodian at the department.

Then, the woman who complained and initiated the investigation into him was fired for the reasons Chavez had already brought up as concerns, according to the suit.

CHAVEZ’S CLAIMS

Chavez says that the many alleged violations that he outlned in the suit, which led to his wrongful firing, constitute violations of the state’s Whistleblower Protection Act. The suit also claims civil conspiracy when the defendants worked together to discredit and retaliate against him.

He also claims the database he worked to build with all information regarding IPRA cases has likely been destroyed intentionally, citing a statement from APD spokesman Tanner Tixier saying it “doesn’t exist” and statements from the city that it has “taken steps to gather and preserve[d] the materials.”

The suit claims that since the city has known about a possible lawsuit since KOB’s report in May, the defendants “intended to disrupt or defeat a potential lawsuit as well as to cover up the facts that underline” the lawsuit, thus impacting Chavez’s ability to prove his case.

It also says that the city breached his contract by improperly firing him.

He is seeking damages from the alleged whistleblower violation, damages for emotional distress, punitive damages, lawyer fees and any further compensation the court would allow.

City Attorney Jessica Hernandez released the following statement to KOB in September when more information was released about the pending lawsuit:

“The City stands prepared to defend against these allegations and claims that records or evidence have been compromised. The city has already taken steps to collect, preserve, and analyze these records and we expect those allegations to be refuted in court. “

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A man sued Roswell police and said officers shot him without identifying themselves following a bizarre chain of events involving a fight with a relative.

Richard Johnson’s family member pistol-whipped him in October 2013, leaving him with a concussion and a bleeding gash, according to his recently filed federal civil rights lawsuit. He walked home, and a few hours later, an officer arrived at his apartment and yelled obscenities at him and told him to come out, the lawsuit says.

Johnson said he came to the door with a pistol and was shot without being told to drop his weapon. It was not known if he fired his gun.

Roswell authorities say police came to Johnson’s apartment after receiving a call about a disorderly drunken man. One officer said he and two colleagues saw a man charging out of an apartment with a small chrome gun, according to an affidavit.

The officer said he heard gunfire, and a fire extinguisher blew up. The officer could not say if Johnson fired his weapon, the affidavit said.

Prior to the shooting, Johnson fired his gun three times during the fight with his relative, asked the family member to shoot him and then threatened to shoot himself, police have said.

Roswell City Manager Steve Polasek said the city couldn’t comment on pending litigation. Bryan Evans, an attorney for the city and the officers, did not immediately return a phone message.

Johnson was charged with aggravated assault, aggravated assault upon a peace officer and negligent use of a deadly weapon. He pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges and is scheduled for a court hearing in April.

His lawsuit calls the officers’ actions “intentional, reckless, willful or deliberate, obdurate, in gross and reckless disregard” to Johnson’s civil rights. It names the city, Roswell police, Police Chief Phil Smith and three officers as plaintiffs.

Johnson has medical expenses from a number of surgeries performed at a Lubbock, Texas, hospital, where he was flown after the shooting, the lawsuit says. Johnson is seeking an unspecified amount of money in damages and medical bills.

Gary Mitchell, an attorney for Johnson, did not immediately return a call for comment.

Joe Perez

A man jaywalking across a street in Albuquerque to catch a bus says police Officer Victor Grossetete chased him down and tackled him on the pavement, breaking the pedestrian’s arm.

Another man says Grossetete repeatedly kicked him in the face during an arrest initiated by a second police officer.

Then there was Sean Belcher, 25, who said Grossetete approached him in a casino in Las Vegas, Nev., touched his tattoo and then punched him. The violence was captured on security cameras. “He kept saying he was from ‘fight city,’ New Mexico,” Belcher said.

Grossetete, 28, has been sued four times on allegations of brutality. Three of those suits date to his five years as an Albuquerque police officer. He resigned from the Albuquerque Police Department in May 2012, after a disciplinary case against him was forwarded to the state Law Enforcement Academy, which certifies officers.

The academy director eventually said it was up to Albuquerque’s police executives to mete out any discipline Grossetete deserved. But by that time, Grossetete had quit his job and moved on to another department.

Grossetete’s work record has raised questions about how carefully New Mexico screens and monitors police officers, even at a time when the Albuquerque Police Department, New Mexico’s largest law enforcement agency, is under supervision of an independent monitor and the courts. The U.S. Department of Justice last year found that Albuquerque police had a pattern of using excessive force, including deadly force.

After Grossetete resigned from the Albuquerque Police Department, his career in law enforcement was revived by Española’s then-police chief, Eric Garcia. Garcia became Española’s chief in December 2012, and he hired Grossetete the following month.

Garcia now is Santa Fe’s police chief, but his decision to employ Grossetete in Española continues to draw criticism.

Some of Garcia’s lieutenants in Santa Fe, as part of an 11-page memo they released last week, say Garcia hired Grossetete even after Grossetete failed a psychological exam. The lieutenants also say that Garcia did not authorize an internal affairs investigation and did not notify the Law Enforcement Academy Board of the fight that Grossetete started in Las Vegas.

Garcia would not comment on his hiring of Grossetete.

As for Grossetete, now he is suing the Española Police Department, saying his reputation has been blackened by reports about the confrontation in Las Vegas, and that Española’s new chief is using that case to try to oust him from the police force.

Sheri Raphaelson, Grossetete’s lawyer, said the four lawsuits against Grossetete don’t prove that he has used excessive force in arresting suspects.
One lawsuit from Grossetete’s years in Albuquerque was settled with a payment to the person claiming brutality. The man’s lawyer, though, said he couldn’t remember the amount of the settlement.

The other three lawsuits against Grossetete are pending.

Raphaelson said that, after Grossetete quit the Albuquerque Police Department, the Española Police Department hired him because “they obviously thought he was a good officer.”

Less than three months after getting his job in Española and a fresh start as a police officer, Grossetete headed to Las Vegas for a vacation. On St. Patrick’s Day 2013, Grossetete approached Belcher, who was sitting next to his girlfriend in the Golden Nugget Hotel & Casino. Security cameras showed Grossetete touching Belcher’s left arm. By Belcher’s account, Grossetete said he liked Belcher’s tattoo.

Story by Uriel J. Garcia. Continue reading on The New Mexican…

The Montana State Legislature

Just in time for the Fourth of July, states are declaring their independence from civil forfeiture.

Enabled by civil forfeiture laws, police can seize and keep property without the government ever filing criminal charges. Innocent Americans actually must prove their own innocence in court if they ever hope to regain their property. Local, state and federal law enforcement agencies routinely seize property and pad their budgets with forfeiture revenue. Outlets as diverse as The New Yorker and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver have detailed this travesty of justice.

But thankfully, civil forfeiture’s days may soon be numbered. Starting July 1, two major reforms from Montana and New Mexico will go into effect.

Earlier this year, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock signed a law that requires the government to first obtain a criminal conviction before taking and keeping someone’s property through civil forfeiture.  This legislation also shifts the burden of proof onto the government—where it belongs—when spouses, neighbors and other innocent owners try to get back property used by a suspect without their knowledge. Montana’s civil forfeiture reforms are vital to restore due process and protect the property rights of the innocent.

New Mexico went even further and abolished civil forfeiture outright. As in Montana, law enforcement can only forfeit property after a criminal conviction. Crucially, this new law requires that all forfeiture money be deposited in the general fund, preventing it from becoming a police slush fund. Without a single vote cast against it, Gov. Susana Martinez (and a former prosecutor) signed this landmark reform on April 10.

Impetus for reform came after the Institute for Justice and The New York Times uncovered unsettling comments made last fall. Speaking at a forfeiture conference, Pete Connelly, then the city attorney for Las Cruces, New Mexico, called civil forfeiture “a gold mine,” and told attendees, “We could be czars. We could own the city.”

Even former stalwart proponents of civil forfeiture have undergone road to Damascus moments. Hal Stratton, a former Republican Attorney General for New Mexico, once backed expanding forfeiture. But in March, he publically urged Gov. Martinez to abolish civil forfeiture. More remarkably, Brad Cates and John Yoder, who both headed the Justice Department’s Asset Forfeiture Office during the Reagan Administration, took to The Washington Post last year to decry civil forfeiture as a “corruption,” calling it “fundamentally at odds with our judicial system and notions of fairness.”

To overhaul the nation’s civil forfeiture laws, lawmakers should follow a four-step approach. Crucially, none of these reforms would affect the ability of law enforcement agencies to take assets from convicted criminals.

First, lawmakers must remove the profit incentive behind civil forfeiture. Allowing police and prosecutors to keep what they seize has enriched law enforcement at the cost of Americans’ constitutional rights. Since 1985, the Justice Department’s Asset Forfeiture Fund has grown from $27 million to over $2 billion in 2013. Nationwide, more than 500 police departments and task forces have seized the equivalent of 20 percent or more of their yearly budgets. To end this appalling incentive to police for profit, legislators should direct all forfeiture proceeds either to the general fund or to a specified neutral fund, like education.

Second, reforms should ensure that property owners are innocent until proven guilty. Denying due process, those facing civil forfeiture often have to prove their own innocence in court.

Third, more states should follow the lead of Montana and New Mexico and require a criminal conviction before forfeiting property. Such a common-sense approach to law enforcement is currently on the books in only four states (Minnesota and North Carolina are the other two).

Finally, states should restrict the ability to participate in the federal “equitable sharing” program. Local and state law enforcement can take up to 80 percent of forfeiture proceeds, if they partner with a federal agency. Appallingly, collaboration can occur even in states that tightened their forfeiture laws, clearly undermining principles of federalism.

New Mexico’s legislation bans its law enforcement from transferring seized property to a federal agency, unless the property at stake is worth at least $50,000. The law also prohibits such transfers if they would “circumvent the protections” state law provides for New Mexicans.

As the renowned economist Frédéric Bastiat once wrote, “It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.” No American should ever lose his property without first being convicted of a crime.

Written by Nick Sibilla for Forbes

Last month Joseph Rivers set out on a train trip from Michigan to Los Angeles, armed with his life savings and dreams of making it big in Hollywood. Unfortunately, before he made it to California, he fell victim to a legal form of government highway robbery.

On April 15th, 22 year old Rivers changed trains at the Amtrak station in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with bags containing his clothes, a few other possessions and an envelope that contained $16,000 in cash that he had raised with the help of his family.

The Albuquerque Journal reports that’s when agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration got on and began looking for people who might be trafficking drugs. It is routine for agents to randomly stop passengers and ask them what their destination is and their reason for travel.

However, Rivers was the only black person on the train, and according to witnesses – his interrogation went much further than anyone else’s. The agent on board requested to go through Rivers’ bag – and when the young man complied his money was seized under suspicion of being linked to the sale of narcotics.

Rivers pleaded and even offered to get his mother on the phone, but his appeals fell on deaf ears.

“These officers took everything that I had worked so hard to save and even money that was given to me by family that believed in me,” Rivers told the Journal. “I told (the DEA agents) I had no money and no means to survive in Los Angeles if they took my money. They informed me that it was my responsibility to figure out how I was going to do that.”

The incident put his dreams to a grinding halt and he is now back in Michigan.

What’s happened to him is called civil asset forfeiture; a legal tool that has been criticized as a violation of due process and a contradiction of the idea that criminal defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

According to the Huffington Post,

Asset forfeiture allows police to seize property they suspect is related to criminal activity, without even charging its owner with a crime. The charges are filed against the property itself — including cash, jewelry, cars and houses — which can then be sold, with part of the proceeds flowing back to the department that made the seizure.

“We don’t have to prove that the person is guilty,” Sean Waite, the agent in charge at the DEA’s Albuquerque’s office, told the Journal. “It’s that the money is presumed to be guilty.”

Michael Pancer, a San Diego attorney who now represents Rivers, says that’s unacceptable.

What this is, is having your money stolen by a federal agent acting under the color of law. It’s a national epidemic. If my office got four to five cases just recently, and I’m just one attorney, you know this is happening thousands of times.”

A recent report by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian group that focuses on civil liberties, showed how widespread civil asset forfeiture has become. The federal program has led to almost $6.8 billion in seized cash and property from 2008 to 2013, the report says.

A series in The Washington Post published last year showed that since 2001, $2.5 billion had been seized in cash alone — all from people who were never charged with a crime and without a warrant being issued.