ALBUQUERQUE – The city of Albuquerque and the Department of Justice are inching closer to an agreement to bring in outside investigators to probe police misconduct.
The special counsel for the Department of Justice’s civil rights division, Paul Killebrew, said Friday that his office was in the process of negotiating with the city to file the measures in January.
The efforts come after a scathing report was released by an independent police monitor of the city police department which said law enforcement was failing to police itself, the Albuquerque Journal reported.
“(The city) agreed the problems were serious and needed to be addressed,” Killebrew said. “So that’s significant. If we had gone to the city and the city disagreed with our picture of reality, and had they not been willing to address the problem we identified, I think we would be in a different posture today. We might have needed to seek enforcement action over the city’s objections.”
