Albuquerque’s Ever-Expanding Police Corruption Scandal Goes Back Decades and Involves ‘Many Officers’
Thomas Clear, the defense attorney at the center of Albuquerque’s police corruption scandal, pleaded guilty this week to federal bribery, extortion, and racketeering charges. Clear’s plea agreement indicates that his long-running arrangement with local police officers, who took bribes in exchange for making DWI cases disappear, goes back further and involves more people than was previously reported.
Ricardo Mendez, an investigator and paralegal who began working for Clear in 2007, pleaded guilty to similar charges last month. At that point, federal prosecutors said the bribery scheme, which they call the “DWI Enterprise,” had begun by 2008. But Clear says he had been running the racket “since at least the late 1990s,” meaning it operated for at least two dozen years before an FBI investigation shut it down in January 2024.
Since Clear also says the scheme eventually encompassed “almost the entire” Albuquerque Police Department (APD) unit charged with apprehending drunk drivers, we are talking about a lot of corrupt cops. As of 2022, seven officers were assigned to the APD’s DWI unit. Judging from the histories of the Albuquerque officers who have been implicated so far, including two who pleaded guilty last week, another who pleaded guilty the same day as Clear, and 10 more who were placed on administrative leave and/or resigned, they typically served in the DWI unit for three to six years. Given the turnover, dozens of cops may have received payoffs from Clear.
The “DWI Enterprise” involved “many officers and an entire unit within APD,” Alexander M.M. Uballez, the U.S. attorney for New Mexico, told KOAT, the ABC affiliate in Albuquerque. “If you go back and look at the people who were involved both throughout that time period and that unit itself, I think that would give you a good sense of the number of people that could be involved…in the scope of this criminal conduct.”
Uballez suggested that some of those people may avoid prosecution because most of the charges his office has used must be brought within five years of the underlying conduct. But “more people will be charged in this case,” he said. “We are going as far back as we can to hold as many people accountable [as possible, including] not just the people who did it now, but the people who started it, the people who perpetuated it, the people who were involved in the beginning and the end.”
The people who “perpetuated it,” Clear says, included officers “who had worked in the DWI unit and were part of the scheme,” who “would help recruit and train the next generation” of corrupt cops, earning bonuses from Clear in return. This “generational participation,” Clear says, “allowed the DWI Enterprise to take root amongst almost the entire APD DWI unit over a lengthy period of time.” The more senior officers “frequently personally introduced” the recruits to Clear and Mendez. Those officers “often assured” the recruits that they ran little risk by participating and helped deliver on that promise as they moved up the ranks.
Clear says he and Mendez expected the senior officers to “use their positions and influence within APD to try to ensure that the DWI officers were not investigated or disciplined in connection with their illegal activity.” The officers whom the APD has publicly linked to the “DWI Enterprise” include the former commander of the departmen
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