{"id":47134,"date":"2025-05-30T14:00:48","date_gmt":"2025-05-30T21:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newmexicopbs.org\/productions\/newmexicoinfocus\/?p=47134"},"modified":"2025-05-30T14:00:49","modified_gmt":"2025-05-30T21:00:49","slug":"apd-on-its-own","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newmexicopbs.org\/productions\/newmexicoinfocus\/apd-on-its-own\/","title":{"rendered":"APD on Its Own"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Public attention has waned, as it so often does, during the last few years of federal oversight at the Albuquerque Police Department. A post-COVID spike in crime, presidential politics, a massive police corruption scandal \u2014 it\u2019s easy enough to see how folks lost touch with the meticulous, numbers-heavy happenings inside a federal courtroom meant to make city officials and the cops they employ follow the Constitution.
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I wrote about the importance of this 11-year police reform project for the May 23 edition<\/a>\u00a0of the New Mexico in Focus newsletter. And we spent last week\u2019s\u00a0episode exploring what led the feds to step in at the state\u2019s largest law enforcement agency \u2014 and whether the long road led to real change.\u00a0

This week, we have the same group of guests. But we asked them a different set of questions, built primarily around this: What happens next for APD, now that the Department of Justice is no longer mandating fixes?\u00a0

Police Chief Harold Medina struck a reassuring tone, telling our host, Nash Jones: \u201cWe\u2019re not going back to where we were… We\u2019ve built a strong department that has accountability, that believes in constitutional policing, and that is lowering crime.\u201d\u00a0

Albuquerque City Councilor Nichole Rogers laid out some ideas for how to continue improving APD, and several times she acknowledged that the city\u2019s legislative branch must now play a larger role in assuring accountability. \u00a0

Albuquerque-based civil rights lawyer Mark Fine also returns to talk about some of the under-discussed benefits of the reform effort \u2014 with transparency at APD topping that list. Fine also questioned why Mayor Tim Keller\u2019s administration has not yet laid out a detailed plan for how to ensure the changes stick.\u00a0

And we end this week\u2019s episode where we began Part 1: with Steve and Renetta Torres, who lost their son, Christopher, in 2011 when two plainclothes APD detectives jumped a wall into the family\u2019s back yard and shot him three times in the back. \u201cThere\u2019s strength in numbers,\u201d Renetta Torres told me about the couple\u2019s decade-and-a-half fight for change.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We hope\u00a0spending two episodes on this massive change for City Hall,\u00a0its police force and Albuquerque residents\u00a0has proven valuable for you. And we want you to know that we will continue watching and reporting as APD moves forward on its own.\u00a0

-Jeff Proctor, Executive Producer<\/p>\n\n\n\n