From 2008 to through 2023, federal prosecutors in New Mexico say, Albuquerque police officers conspired with a local defense attorney, Thomas Clear, and his investigator, Ricardo Mendez, to make DWI cases disappear in exchange for bribes. Mendez pleaded guilty on Friday to eight federal charges in connection with the long-running scheme, which prosecutors say mainly involved officers assigned to the Albuquerque Police Department’s DWI unit but also included employees of the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office (BCSO) and the New Mexico State Police (NMSP).
The details of this massive corruption scandal have been slowly emerging since January 2024, when FBI agents searched Clear’s office. The federal investigation of the Albuquerque Police Department (APD), which also involved searches of officers’ homes, resulted in the dismissal of some 200 DWI cases and an internal probe. So far, the Santa Fe New Mexican reports, “at least a dozen Albuquerque police officers have been placed on leave,” and many of them have dodged interviews with internal investigators by resigning. But Mendez’s guilty plea is the first public confirmation of criminal charges in the case, and it reveals more extensive corruption than the initial press reports suggested.
According to the charges against Mendez, which include racketeering, bribery, and “interference with commerce by extortion,” he and his boss, Clear, had a mutually beneficial arrangement with Albuquerque cops who specialized in nabbing drunk drivers. The officers would generate business for Clear by referring arrestees to his office. Those clients, who typically paid Clear in cash, were amazed and delighted at his ability to make their cases go away, sparing them prosecution and revocation of their driver’s licenses. But federal prosecutors say that impressive track record was not due to Clear’s legal skills so much as his payoffs to the cops, who conveniently failed to show up at pretrial interviews or court hearings, allowing the aptly named Clear to seek dismissal of the charges on the grounds that the crucial witnesses against his clients were absent.
Initially, those no-shows involved pretrial interviews (PTIs) of witnesses that defendants were entitled to arrange. After March 24, 2022, when the New Mexico Supreme Court suspended PTIs for cases filed in Bernalillo County Municipal Court, the must-miss events were motion hearings and trials. As a reward for their poor attendance record, prosecutors say, officers “were often paid in cash but, at times, also received other benefits and things of value,” including “free legal services, gift cards, hotel rooms, and other gifts.”
According to prosecutors, Albuquerque officers sometimes would, contrary to department policy, refrain from charging DWI suspects and instead provide their contact information or their driver’s licenses to Mendez. Those drivers “were asked to pay several thousand dollars in U.S. currency in exchange for the APD officer not filing charges against the DWI Offenders.”
Hellbound and Down 