O, Lord, it must be fun around the ol’ cop shop these days.
Take two steps forward toward getting out from under a Justice Department consent decree, take one back over some nonspecific fishiness involving DUIs, at least one local attorney, and an FBI investigation.
Online reports are light on details — more than 150 pending DUI cases dismissed, a number of Albuquerque Police Department officers placed on paid leave or reassigned, a lawyer’s office raided, etc. — and long on speculation. The Albuquerque Journal‘s print edition is a tad more specific, but it seems nobody feels very chatty in the early days of whatever this turns out to be.
APD spokesman Gilbert Gallegos told the Journal that APD had been working with the FBI “for the past several months on an investigation involving members of the department” and that “several” officers have been placed on paid administrative leave while the inquiry continues.
Of the 152 pending DWI cases dismissed, 136, or nearly 90%, were filed by three Albuquerque police officers, according to court records. One officer was responsible for 67 of the cases; another had 41; and the third was listed as the arresting officer on 28.
The Albuquerque Journal
Attorney Kari Morrissey, who has one client whose case was dismissed, told City Desk ABQ, “I will say that as a lawyer who has been practicing criminal defense in Albuquerque for almost 25 years, I am not surprised as to these developments.”
John D’Amato, an attorney with the Albuquerque Police Officers’ Association, told City Desk ABQ he was aware of a pending criminal investigation, adding: “No comment is the word of the day. It’s developing and the facts are unclear.”
One thing is clear. We have statues of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman here in The Duck! City. But not of Frank Serpico. Or Saul Goodman, now that I think of it. That dude couldn’t even get an Emmy.
Mad Blog Media 
It’s all good, man.
Can you believe it? Not one Emmy for Saul. Not one. He should’ve gotten two for the Hoboken Squat Cobbler thing.
“The world is a rich tapestry, my friends. But trust me on this: You don’t wanna see it.”
“You want a criminal lawyer.” Melania says, “You better call Rudy.”
Don’t hear much these days from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Scotch Pig, do we? Thank God for small favors. Maybe he’s too busy singin’ to da feds like a stool-pigeon, rat-fink canary-boid.
Hit the news this morning. Boy is in bankruptcy court with his mouthpiece singing the blues, and the creditors saying me first.
Why, yes indeed, there our boy is. The AP did a nice job of selecting an image for its online story.
The election workers in Georgia should be first in line. If anyone should be doing the “squat cobbler” it should be rudy the mooch. Eighty something years old and his only income is lying on youtube. That’s what happens under the bus. Lots of others going to find out as the dumpster shit show unravels in the next few months. Three hots and a cot at club fed, paid for by us, will look pretty good to rudy the mooch.
Man, it’s looking like a long year. Still … I’ve seen a few photos of You Know Who where it looks like the carefully assembled facade is crumbling; hair askew, shoulders slumped, the clown makeup haphazardly applied. And the words lately just don’t seem to be lining up in their proper order, even when he’s trying to sing his Top 10 Greatest Hits.
Maybe the Devil has finally heard enough. “OK, pally, you’ve had enough. And it’s way past closing time. Let’s settle your tab.”
Well, I don’t think the buttock neck punkeroo will quit the race, even if convicted. He is determined to pardon himself. If he says “I alone can do it” then he would, for once, be right.
Quit? Who wants him to quit? I’m hoping he’ll stroke out, preferably on camera, where we can enjoy every gibber, slobber, and twitch before the Big Bill comes due. Not even Chapter 11 will save him then.
I don’t pay much attention to the award parade but I just checked his IMDB page and I wasn’t aware that he hadn’t won an Emmy for Better Call Saul. I guess that’s the reason I don’t pay much attention to the award parade. Hmmm? Odenkirk playing the role as a decaying Rudy. He certainly could pull it off.
It sounds as though Albuquerque might be a good place to enjoy your drinking with your driving about now. Unless of course you need a haircut. I believe from an earlier post that it’s a good idea to make an appointment for that.
How’s the ice patches down there? Are they relinquishing to the radiant glare of sol? We had a nice frozen rainfall earlier this evening to top the glazing ice that is atop the snow in our area. It’s fascinating stuff, at least as long as you don’t drink and drive. I had thought of throwing on the studded tires on the bike but the roads are still snowbound enough to take the pleasure out of trying to stay upright. It seems that a portion of the 17 mil in taxes that we pay wasn’t budgeted correctly to pay for the fuel for snow removal. Besides we’re in Oregon. The thinking up here is to stay home until it melts. That’s ok for a couple of days but it’s not a good practice for a week or more. The roads around here are going to be bumpy for a while now.
The weather cleared up nicely, though the roads remain gritty. I got out for four rides and two runs this week, and will do a third run this morning if I can get a jump on what looks like rain headed our way. The trails have tamped down pretty nicely after some light sun and wind.
Meanwhile, yeah, awards are the bunk, the hokum, the scratching of backs. Right up there with “sports” that are decided by judges or referees instead of impartially awarded points or definitive finish lines. But when some interesting show gets totally skunked I wonder whose tender toesies got trampled, and by whom.
First person I thought of when I read about the latest APD “irregularity” was Frank Serpico. I recall watching the movie when it came out and reading the book on one of my NROTC summer cruises.
Sometimes when you poke around the edges of these little scandals, the threads you pull run deep. Let’s see what comes out of this.
We hosted a Donk ward meeting last night and Mayor Keller popped by, along with Rep. Pamelya Herndon, and Hizzoner was asked about the latest from the cop shop. He couldn’t say much, of course, it being an ongoing investigation and all, but promised that we’d all be hearing a good more about it in the days to come. The long and the short of it was a few bad apples in an otherwise-solid barrel, but the apples seem to have been stinking up that barrel for quite a while now.
If I might, if the rotten apples have been around for more than a few weeks without being turned in by fellow officers then there are nothing BUT rotten apples all the way down.
The cops are a fascinating subculture. I was briefly a police reporter and can’t say I enjoyed my tenure. I spent too many years as a low-level criminal to feel comfortable around lawmen.
Frank Serpico is only the most famous name that crops up when people talk about cops gone rogue. The former LAPD patrolman turned detective Joe Wambaugh made a pretty good second career writing about this sort of thing.
I think it’s fair to say that the police have a tough row to hoe, and it hasn’t gotten any easier for them since the late Seventies, when I was popping round the cop shop to thumb through the daily reports. It’s easy to see how the idea that the cops represent a “thin blue line” that is the public’s only defense against anarchy can take hold, maybe encourage some to start awarding themselves bonuses.
We see this sort of thing in other subsets of the workforce — time-card fraud, items going missing off the loading dock, office workers helping themselves to reams of printer paper, and so on. “I don’t get paid enough for this shit” is not something only the cops say.
But then the rest of us aren’t sporting “To Protect and Serve” decals on our cars.
If you’re into reading about fraud, corruption, bribery, conspiracy, murder, poisoning, et al …… give “Killers of the Flower Moon” a go. A non-fiction documented account of the Osage Tribe and how, after the US placed them on supposedly worthless land in Oklahoma, oil was discovered under it. Truly a low point in our Nation’s history and it makes the ABQ Police episode seem like juvenile delinquent child’s play.
And if you want a brilliant bit of satire on this topic, revisit “Temporarily Humboldt County” by The Firesign Theatre:
Indian: “No reason to complain. It’s not so bad out there. We still have our people and our ceremonies and the sun, moon, and stars, and the sand, and the black stuff coming out of the ground. …”
Government agent: “Black stuff coming out of the ground?”
Trailblazer: “Civilizationnnnnn … ho-ooooooo!”
Huh. Well, having spent exactly zero seconds following the news about the Albuquerque cops, I can speculate that it was a situation where some cops decided to engage in illegal activity that capitalized on the the coverage their badge gives them, AND whoever’s in charge didn’t trust their own ability to deal with it (hence the FBI involvement). I venture this prediction. (1) the cops responsible will be charged, convicted and stripped of their job, (2) no one will ask why they did it, (3) you’ll hear a lot of “a few bad apples” kind of talk, (4) no one but no one will try to get to the bottom of why otherwise responsible cops decided to do it, and (5) zero corrective action will be taken. Try conveying that to your mayor next time you see him.
Well … it could be that during the nearly 10 years The Duck! City has been operating under a Court-Approved Settlement Agreement (CASA) with the U.S. Justice Department the brass were focused on stopping the rank-and-file from shooting everything with a pulse and decided to give lesser crimes a pass. I’m waiting to see what the feds have to say.
In the meantime, we have this: One of the cops whose house got searched by the federales was Mothers Against Drunk Driving’s 2023 Officer of the Year for New Mexico. The Albuquerque Journal says he’s been with APD’s DWI unit “since at least 2015 and was the investigating officer on the majority of DWI cases that have been dismissed as a result of the FBI’s investigation.”