Corrupt Albuquerque Cops Had Friends in High Places, Including Internal Affairs
For a decade and a half, federal prosecutors in New Mexico say, Albuquerque police officers conspired with a local defense attorney, Thomas Clear, and his investigator, Ricardo Mendez, to make DWI cases disappear in exchange for bribes. According to prosecutors, this “DWI Enterprise” was so engrained that it encompassed “almost the entire” Albuquerque Police Department (APD) unit charged with apprehending drunk drivers.
The scheme began, expanded, and continued operating right under the noses of top supervisors, including Police Chief Harold Medina. Recent plea agreements shed light on how that was possible: The defendants say the racket enjoyed the protection of senior APD officers who had participated in it—apparently including the commander and deputy commander of the department’s internal affairs division and a lieutenant who worked for them, all of whom were placed on administrative leave as a result of the corruption scandal. Medina, who has repeatedly promised to “make sure that we get to the bottom of this,” had previously put those officers in charge of rooting out corruption.
Mendez pleaded guilty to federal racketeering, bribery, and extortion charges on January 24. Last Friday, two former APD officers, Honorio Alba Jr. and Joshua Montaño, pleaded guilty to similar charges.
Alba, who resigned last March amid the federal corruption investigation, joined the APD in June 2014 and was assigned to the department’s DWI unit in February 2017. His performance supposedly was so exemplary that the New Mexico chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving named him “Officer of the Year” in July 2023, a distinction that the APD proudly noted in an Instagram post that was not deleted until the end of 2024. By the time Alba received that honor, he admitted in his plea agreement, he had been taking bribes from Clear’s office for five years.
In exchange for cash, “free legal services, gift cards, hotel rooms, and other gifts,” Alba and his colleagues would either refrain from filing charges against DWI suspects or ensure that charges were dismissed by failing to show up at pretrial interviews, hearings, or trials. The cops typically would refer drivers they stopped to Mendez, who would promise to make their cases go away if they hired Clear to represent them, paying for his services in cash. Clear had an impressive track record of delivering on that promise, allowing drivers to avoid criminal records and keep their licenses, by seeking dismissals based on the arresting officer’s prearranged absence.
“Alba admitted he helped recruit officers into the scheme and personally introduced them to Mendez and Clear,” the Albuquerque Journal notes. He “warned the pair which officers to ‘avoid attempting to recruit'” because they might be inclined to blow the whistle. He “admitted that he, Clear and Mendez also asked senior APD officers who had been involved in the scheme ‘to use their positions and influence’ to ensure the officers involved were not exposed.”
Montaño, who resigned in March 2024, became an APD officer in 2008. He was assigned to the DWI unit in May 2017 and began taking bribes in 2019. “I was aware that other APD Officers Members who had worked in the DWI unit and were part of the scheme would help recruit and train the next generation of Officer Members,” he says in his plea agreement. Montaño adds that Mendez “discussed with me many of the other officers,” including employees of the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office and the New Mexico State Police as well as the APD, who “had been and were part of the DWI Enterprise.”
Mendez “did so,” Montaño surmised, to “make me feel more comfortable joining the DWI Enterprise because of the number of senior, and often high-ranking, officers who were also Officer Members, and to ease my concerns about continuing to participate in the DWI Enterprise.” He says “this generational participation, particularly within APD, allowed the DWI Enterprise to take root amongst almost the entire APD DWI unit over a lengthy period of time.” Montaño says it was his understanding that Clear and Mendez “would ask more senior APD Officer Members to use their positions and influence within APD to try to ensure that DWI officers, including me, were not investigated or disciplined in connection with their illegal activity.”
The “positions and influence” of senior officers who had themselves participated in the no-show scheme help explain why Medina, whose tenure as deputy chief, interim chief, and chief began in December 2017, avowedly did not have a clue about what was happening until he was briefed on the FBI investigation of the DWI unit in October 2023. The APD has linked a dozen officers to the DWI corruption scandal, including Commander Mark Landavazo, who was placed on administrative leave in February 2024 and fired the following August; Deputy Commander Gustavo Gomez, who was placed on administrative leave last October; Lt. Justin Hunt, who resigned in February 2024; Lt. Kyle Curtis,
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