Albuquerque's settlement costs rise in 2010, 2011

The Associated Press

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. —

Over the past two years combined, the city of Albuquerque has paid out more than $8 million to settle police misconduct cases.

The Albuquerque Journal reports (http://bit.ly/yx9Fmk ) that in the previous eight years, the city had paid nearly $10 million to resolve such cases.

Mayor Richard Berry has done away with his predecessor Martin Chavez's policy of settling a limited number of cases.

Chavez, now running for Congress, in the past has defended his limited settlement policy and has said the city prevailed in almost every case instead of paying out.

But Rob Perry, Albuquerque's chief administrative officer, said the Chavez administration saddled Berry's team with a high number of unresolved cases and said that while payouts have gone up, the city could have lost more money in some cases if it had gone to trial.

All but five of the 60 payouts in 2010 and 2011 stemmed from cases that were initiated during Chavez's tenure as mayor, Perry said. The city felt it was in its best economic interest to settle some of the cases, he said.

A statement from the president and vice president of the Albuquerque Police Officers Association says the policy shift amounts to a lack of support for police officers from the city administration.

There are cases stacking up that were initiated since Berry took office.

There were 20 police shootings between January 2010 and August 2011, 15 of which were fatal, and they have spawned at least a half-dozen lawsuits.

Chavez's no-settlement policy wasn't hard and fast, especially toward the end of his time in the mayor's office.

In July 2009, the city agreed to pay $575,000 to settle a civil lawsuit brought by a woman who said she was taken out of a hospital and raped by an on-duty Albuquerque police officer.

Chavez's last year in office, 2009, saw a handful of cases settled. More than $2.7 million was paid out that year.

Meanwhile, it is not unusual to have cases carry over to a new administration.

When Chavez took office for the second of his three mayoral terms at the end of 2001, there were numerous police misconduct cases already sitting on his desk from former Mayor Jim Baca's term. All but one of the cases resolved during Chavez's first two years in office were filed under Baca.

Attorney Joe Fine, who has represented clients in police misconduct cases, said the no-settlement policy contributed to a lack of accountability among Albuquerque officers.

"Mayor Chavez's policy of not settling police misconduct cases might have saved the city money on a short-term basis, but if this penny-wise, pound-foolish policy had continued, it would have resulted in more needless injuries and, in the long-run, a greater financial loss," Fine said.

Perry said addressing the accountability issue was among the reasons for changing the policy, but that does not amount to a lack of support for officers.

"We support our officers, but when it comes down to financial decisions, those are not made by the officers," he said.

The city is likely to continue considering officer misconduct claims on a case-by-case basis, Perry said. After an onslaught of revelations involving police misconduct, the possible underreporting of crimes and secret undercover operations funded by a prominent businessman, Memphis Mayor A C Wharton said Saturday that an outside review of the force is imminent.

·         The mayor said he signed a contract with a Washington-based organization called Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) last month, and that it will be given free rein to review operations of the Memphis Police Department starting this week.

·         "We've been negotiating this for almost a year," said Wharton. "It's not a reaction to recent events, but maybe we need to expand that scope."

·         It's important to note that PERF doesn't come into a city with the intent to investigate corruption, Wharton said, but rather to look for systematic gaps or weaknesses in organization, personnel and employment.

·         With the first month of the year not even over, Memphis police officers so far in 2012 have faced charges of shoplifting, harassment, computer fraud, child sex and attempting to buy drugs.

·         Most recently, officer Melvin Robinson was arrested Thursday for allegedly putting what he believed to be 10 kilograms of cocaine in the back of his squad car. He faces federal drug charges and was relieved of duty with pay pending an investigation.

·         Wharton didn't mince his words on the subject.

·         "I can't tell courts what to do, but he should be fired with absolutely no possibility of reinstatement even if the charges are reduced," he said. "It should be done as quickly as possible and will be."

·         A month ago, another officer, Michael Sinnock, was charged for allegedly trying to buy marijuana and hydrocodone while on duty. In November, officer Tramaine Johnson was arrested in Nashville for possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia during a routine traffic stop. And in October, officer Eric Johnson was indicted as part of a 25-person drug ring that trafficked more than 2,200 pounds of marijuana.

·         Part of the solution to the problem of police misconduct, Wharton said, is a more stringent screening process for prospective officers.

·         And Memphis Police Association president Michael Williams agreed.

·         "When they lowered the standards a couple years ago, they got a lot of officers that are not living up to what is expected of us," said Williams, referring to lessened education requirements that were later reinstated.

·         Still, most of the approximately 2,400 MPD officers "do what they are supposed to do," said Williams.

·         On the subject of the 79,000 crimes recorded in the last five years as "memos" rather than full police reports, Wharton's message was one of reassurance.

·         The Commercial Appeal quoted Police Director Toney Armstrong saying hundreds of the memos should have become "full-blown reports," which would have been included in statistics. But even if they had, Wharton said, crime statistics still would have shown a marked decline.

·         The mayor added that department officials had not been trying to manipulate numbers to show lower crime levels.

·         "If someone wanted to really juggle numbers, I think they could have found a better way than to write a memo and leave it for whole world to discover," he said.

·         Despite former police director Larry Godwin's assertion that the memo review was an attempt by the new regime to tarnish his name, Wharton said it wasn't personal.

·         "The Memphis Police Department can't run a city by looking backwards, trying to vilify someone," he said.

·         Yet Wharton was less specific when discussing findings from a recent audit of the department's undercover unit, specifically businessman Nick Clark's loans to the department amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars for secret operations, as reported by The Commercial Appeal on Friday.

·         "Why I was not shocked by that operation is that as a former defense lawyer, I know it would be the epitome of naivete to think a big-city police department does not have a real sophisticated 'front' operation.

·         "I'm letting the police work. I don't think it's proper for a mayor to know all the inner workings of undercover operations. ... But if we need to do this going forward, it will be done with the right precautions."