APS Police force crippled by BCSO SOP? BS?

Re; Senate Bill 306, allowing APS to have its own Police Department.

According the Legislative Education Study Committee report,
APS claims it needs its own police department because, under the oversight of the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office;

"... its police force is unable to deal with children and adolescents because the Standard Operating Procedures followed by the Bernalillo County Sheriff's are not tailored for children or adolescents."

I'd be willing to bet that nobody asked Bernalillo County Sheriff Dan Houston if his deputies are under-trained and ill-equipped to deal with children and adolescents; nor that he conceded that his deputies are not trainable in that respect.

The leadership of the Albuquerque Public Schools would like to have a police department.  Having a "department" as opposed their current publicly funded private police "force", will allow the APS police to self-investigate allegations of felony criminal misconduct by administrators and school board members. APS police will not be required to turn allegations and evidence over to another agency of law enforcement.

The appearance of conflicting interests in investigating one's own felony criminal misconduct is currently addressed by the BCSO and Houston's MOU with APS, requiring them to surrender evidence of internal felony criminal misconduct to either his department or the Albuquerque Police Dept.  Without the requirements imposed by the BCSO, the APS police force will be free to suppress  allegations and evidence for as long as they choose, even while statutes of limitation expire.

No one has ever disputed the validity of following allegation; not APS Supt Winston Brooks, not APS' Executive Director of Communications Monica Armenta, not APS Police Chief Steve Tellez, not one school board member, and importantly, not one editor or broadcast news director.  The scandal was first reported in the Journal, link.

APS administrators were involved in felony criminal misconduct; moving cash from evidence and spending it as petty cash and without record keeping, and illegal criminal background checks on whistleblowers.  No one has denied these are felonious acts or that they were committed.

At least three separate investigations were done.  The findings of  those investigations, though they public records and enjoy no legitimate exception under the law, are being hidden from public knowledge in violation of public records law.

No evidence of felony criminal misconduct has been handed over to the DA or any other agency of law enforcement.  No APS administrator was ever charged or held criminally accountable.  None ever will; statutes of limitation on felony criminal misconduct have expired.

Whatever else Senate Bill 306 does, it will enable the leadership of the APS to continue to cover up their own felony criminal misconduct.

And that's wrong, right?




photo Mark Bralley