Albuquerque –
In February 2024, Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina ran a red light and crashed into a classic Mustang, leaving one man seriously injured. Police Chief Medina had his wife in the vehicle and claims he saw a struggle where he was shot at or near him. The case was marked by controversy, as Mayor Tim Keller called Police Chief Medina a hero immediately after the accident and there were public protests about why Police Chief Medina fled the shooting. Even the APD decided to conduct its own internal investigation into the incident, sparing Police Chief Medina from any political consequences.
On Friday, August 23, 2024, Louie Sanchez, a retired APD Lieutenant of District 1, filed a complaint with the New Mexico Department of Public Safety (DPS) to investigate possible misconduct by Chief Medina at the scene of the accident during and after the Chief’s February 2024 car accident.
Councilman Sanchez filed a formal request for a state investigation into Police Chief Medina’s conduct at the scene of the accident in February. The request, known as LEA-90, came in light of Medina’s admission to APD’s Internal Affairs Division that he intentionally and knowingly failed to activate his body-worn camera while involved in a police action. Such action by Medina appears to violate Governor Michele Lujan Grisham’s Public Safety Accountability Act of 2020, which requires police officers to wear body-worn cameras and record encounters with citizens.
The Law Enforcement Training Act (Sections 29-7-1 to 29-7-16) grants the Law Enforcement
The Board of Directors of the Academy shall have the authority and duty to deny, suspend, or revoke the certification of any law enforcement officer or telecommunications operator for good cause as provided in the Law Enforcement Training Act and the rules of the Board.
“As the chief police officer of the largest police agency in the state, the chief
to hold themselves to a higher standard than their crew, not a lower one. We are at a crossroads where officers
Morale is at an all-time low and public confidence may be even lower,” explained Council Member Sanchez. “Boss
Medina’s actions are the kind of actions that the U.S. Department of Justice has been investigating in the first
place. Here he openly disregarded state law.”
An internal APD review of the accident found that Police Chief Harold Medina did not activate his body camera during the accident because he wanted to invoke the 5th Amendment to the Constitution. In 2020, Governor Grisham ordered that all NM officers must use body cameras when interacting with citizens. NM Stat. § 29-1-18 A law enforcement agency must require police officers it employs who regularly interact with the public to wear a body-worn camera while on duty, except as provided in subsection B of this section. APD policy SOP 2-8-5.A specifically states that any contact with a person in public requires the camera to be activated. Chief Medina told internal investigators that he refused to activate his camera because he was invoking his right to non-incrimination under the 5th Amendment to the Constitution. Attorneys we have spoken with have argued that this argument does not hold water, for the following reasons: Chief Medina was not in custody and did not give a coerced statement, so his invocation of the 5th Amendment during his interviews was not applicable. Not to mention the civil consequences that may result. NMSA 29-1-18 Section C: “Peace officers who fail to comply with the policies and procedures to be established pursuant to subsection A of this section may be presumed to have acted in bad faith and may be liable for the independent tort of negligent destruction of evidence or the independent tort of intentional destruction of evidence.”. In Chief Medina’s interview with investigators, he also invokes spousal confidentiality, but that only applies to civil cases, not criminal cases. The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution only applies to criminal investigations. None of that comes into play when an officer is on duty and required by state law to run the OBRD, but Chief Medina’s problem is that he can’t have it both ways.
We have emailed Harold Medina of the APD for comment. We have also reached out to New Mexico Law Enforcement Academy Board President Sonya Chavez for comment. So far, neither has gotten back to us.
