Albuquerque, New Mexico, Police Chief Harold Medina operated his department-issued pickup truck “in an unsafe manner” on February 17, when he ran a red light and broadsided a car, severely injuring the driver. So concludes a recent report from internal investigators who looked into that shocking incident.
Duh, you might say if you have seen surveillance camera footage of the crash, which shows Medina crossing Central Avenue, a busy, four-lane street, against the light. He crosses the westbound lanes through a gap between two cars, forcing one of the drivers to brake abruptly, before barreling across the eastbound lanes, where he rams into the side of a gold 1966 Mustang driven by 55-year-old Todd Perchert.
Although Medina’s recklessness seems obvious, the Albuquerque Police Department’s Fleet Crash Review Board (CRB) earlier this year concluded that the crash was “non-preventable.” How so? Medina, who was on his way to a Saturday press conference with his wife when he took a detour to have a look at a homeless encampment, said he ran the light to escape an altercation between two homeless men that had escalated into gunfire at the intersection of Central and Alvarado Drive.
While “the initial decision to enter the intersection is not in question,” Lt. James Ortiz says in the Internal Affairs report, “the facts and circumstances do not relieve department personnel of driving safely to ensure no additional harm is done to personnel or to citizens.” Medina, Ortiz says, clearly failed to do that: “By definition, driving into a crosswalk, darting between two vehicles driving on a busy street, and crossing through an intersection with vehicles traveling eastbound were unsafe driving practices.” In this case, he notes, those unsafe practices “resulted in a vehicle collision with serious physical injuries to the victim, including a broken collarbone and shoulder blade, 8 broken ribs (reconstructed with titanium plates after surgery), collapsed lung, lacerations to left ear and head, multiple gashes to his face, a seven-hour surgery, and hospitalization requiring epidural painkiller and a chest tube for nearly a week.”
Ortiz not only disagrees with the CRB’s conclusion about Medina’s crash; he says the board never should have reviewed the incident to begin with, since its mission is limited to accidents “not resulting in a fatality or serious injury.” Ortiz says Commander Benito Martinez, who chairs the CRB, violated department policy when he decided the board should pass judgment on Medina’s accident.
Martinez acknowledged that department policy “prohibited the CRB from hearing serious injury crashes” and that “allowing such a case to be heard would be a policy violation.” Why did he allow it anyway? “He explained that his reasoning for permitting the Chief’s crash to be reviewed by the CRB was based on his belief that someone wanted the crash to be heard,” Ortiz writes. “Cmdr. Martinez clarified that he believed someone from Internal Affairs wanted the case to be heard by the CRB to ensure full transparency. However, he did not consult with anyone in Internal Affairs to verify the accuracy of this assumption.”
Both the CRB’s decision to review the crash and its implicit exoneration of Medina are hard to fathom. But Medina’s explanations for the third policy violation identified by Ortiz—the chief’s failure to activate his body camera after the crash—are even weirder.
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