This was not a very good week for John Allen, the elected sheriff of Bernalillo County, New Mexico. “I’ve by no means been betrayed like this in my life, and I am fairly frickin’ pissed off proper now,” he introduced at a press convention on Thursday, placing the lectern for emphasis. “I’m very offended proper now.”
Why is Allen so offended? On Monday, Undersheriff Johann Jareno, whom Allen described as “my right-hand man” on the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Workplace (BCSO), resigned at Allen’s request after he was implicated in a long-running, far-reaching police bribery scheme involving workers of three regulation enforcement companies who took payoffs in trade for making DWI instances disappear. The following day, Deputy Jeff Hammerel, whom Allen had positioned on administrative depart a month in the past after studying that the FBI was investigating him, pleaded responsible to federal bribery and extortion expenses.
Hammerel admitted to conspiring with Albuquerque protection lawyer Thomas Clear, his paralegal, and “a supervisory BCSO deputy” (an obvious reference to Jareno) to assist Clear’s shoppers keep away from prosecution and hold their driver’s licenses. In trade for money funds, Hammerel would chorus from submitting DWI expenses or intentionally miss hearings, pretrial interviews, or trials, permitting Clear to hunt dismissals primarily based on the arresting officer’s absence. That scheme, which additionally concerned the New Mexico State Police and almost each officer assigned to the Albuquerque Police Division (APD) unit charged with apprehending drunk drivers, started within the Nineteen Nineties and continued by 2023.
The sheriff took one other hit on Wednesday when the Albuquerque Journal printed a photograph of a beaming Allen together with his arm round Ricardo Mendez, who performed a central position in what prosecutors name the “DWI Enterprise” as Clear’s paralegal and investigator. Within the picture, which was taken throughout a February 2023 lunch at a Little Anita’s restaurant, Jareno is standing behind the sheriff and the confessed racketeer, his smiling face seen between them.
All of this sheds gentle on the grievance that Allen vented a few weeks in the past in an interview with KRQE, the CBS affiliate in Albuquerque. Allen complained that the FBI had not stored him apprised of its corruption investigation, which turned public in January 2024 after brokers searched Clear’s workplace and the houses of a number of Albuquerque law enforcement officials. “I will cooperate with you,” Allen mentioned, explaining his perspective towards the FBI, “however I haven’t got any extra belief in you.”
As Allen now concedes, it was really the opposite means round: In gentle of his shut working relationship with Jareno and his chumminess with Mendez, federal investigators didn’t belief him. “Why did the FBI not belief Sheriff Allen?” he mentioned on the press convention, repeating a query he mentioned he had seen “in social media.” He answered that query with one other query: “How within the hell would the FBI ever belief me when my right-hand man, who speaks for me, [was a suspect]?” He added that “in fact they’re gonna suspect me while you discover me in a photograph with this man”—i.e., Mendez, whom Allen referred to as “a bit of crap.”
Allen was already nervous about his connection to Mendez throughout his February 12 interview with KRQE. “I used to be really buddies” with Mendez, who “donated to my marketing campaign,” Allen mentioned then, and “I met with Tom Clear.” Allen anxious about “the notion that that they had entry to me,” saying, “it actually does bug me as a result of that notion is on the market.” On Thursday, he complained that native information retailers had been “beginning to defame my character” and emphasised that appearances might be deceiving.
Jareno, who began working for the BCSO in March 2009 and served in its DWI unit from December 2011 to October 2019, “launched me to Mr. Mendez” in 2021, Allen mentioned on the press convention. Though Allen is a Democrat and Mendez is a Republican, Mendez preferred Allen sufficient to donate $200 to his 2022 election marketing campaign. (Jareno, for his half, donated $1,000.) Though “I am not gonna bear in mind precisely what number of instances I met with Mr. Mendez,” Allen mentioned, they’d talk about “my behavioral well being plan” and “what I used to be going to do in regards to the crime downside” and “corruption,” which “in hindsight” is “very odd” as a result of corruption “was already right here.”
Allen, who took workplace as sheriff in January 2023 however had labored for the BCSO from 2001 to 2019, mentioned he had no inkling in regards to the corruption in his workplace till the FBI investigation revealed it. “If I ever knew that Mr. Jareno and that Mr. Mendez had been doing what they had been doing,” he mentioned, “do you assume in all hell I’d ever have a lunch with him? No, I’d not.”
That lunch, which Allen mentioned Jareno “arrange,” occurred “three weeks into my time period,” he famous, and “it’s OK for me to have lunch.” As a “a politician and the sheriff,” he mentioned, he has a whole lot of lunches and poses for a lot of photographs. This explicit image, he emphasised, doesn’t imply “I’ve something to do with this DWI scandal.”
Allen mentioned he additionally was not conscious of Mendez’s legal document, which KRQE says “dates again to 1990” and features a felony conviction involving “greater than 60 kilos of marijuana,” which resulted in 18 months of probation. The Albuquerque Journal reviews that Mendez additionally confronted a cocaine cost, which “was dismissed after prosecutors acknowledged he had furnished ‘data'” useful to an ongoing investigation. “Why would I ever ask if he had a legal conviction or his legal historical past if he was already a paralegal?” Allen requested reporters. “That is not one thing I’d ever assume.”
The lunch at Little Anita’s—throughout which Allen had pancakes however “did not eat all three of them” as a result of he “was full,” in case you had been questioning—could have been simply as harmless because the sheriff describes it. However Allen engaged in a little bit of revisionism when he mentioned, “I would not even name it a friendship,” referring to his relationship with Mendez. Simply a few weeks in the past, in any case, Allen volunteered that he “was really buddies” with Mendez. Even when Allen didn’t “have something to do with this DWI scandal,” his belief in Jareno was clearly misplaced.
“It makes me sick to my abdomen…understanding he was that near me,” Allen mentioned. “I actually acquired sick and threw up in my rubbish can.”
Like Allen, Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina insists he had no clue in regards to the corruption found by the FBI. Medina’s avowed obliviousness is arduous to fathom, since he first joined the APD in 1995, has held senior positions for greater than a decade, and has run or helped run the division since 2017.
In line with a lawsuit by drivers arrested for DWI, Medina “ratified the conduct” of corrupt officers by “failing to intervene after receiving a number of notices” that they had been “violating the regulation.” In December 2022, for instance, the APD acquired a tip that DWI officers, together with one who later pleaded responsible to federal corruption expenses, had been getting paid to be sure that instances had been dismissed. The investigation of that tip didn’t discover any proof of bribery. Nor did the APD below Medina hold cautious monitor of officers’ court docket appearances, which could have revealed a suspicious sample of absences and dismissals in instances involving Clear’s shoppers.
Allen, against this, emphasizes that he has been working the BCSO solely since January 2023. However is it believable that he by no means caught wind of Clear’s racket throughout his 18 years with the BCSO?
Allen himself recommended that deputies who weren’t immediately concerned within the scheme could have heard about it. “If you happen to ever knew something about this and also you did not do something to cease it, get the hell outta my company,” he mentioned. “Now we have an obligation to report…Now we have an obligation to intervene.”
The proof to date means that corruption was much less pervasive within the BCSO and the state police than it was within the APD, the place it concerned “virtually your complete” DWI unit. Along with Hammerel, three APD officers have pleaded responsible to date, together with Mendez and Clear. One other dozen or so officers—together with the previous commander of the APD’s inner affairs division, his deputy, three lieutenants, and a state police sergeant who had been lionized for nabbing drunk drivers—have been publicly implicated within the “DWI Enterprise.” Since that scheme goes again many years (“30 years,” in response to Allen), it might simply contain dozens of officers.
Allen defended his resolution to not conduct an inner investigation, because the APD did. “Everyone retains asking me about an inner affairs investigation,” he mentioned. “I am so sick of listening to that query. I cannot do something to intervene with the legal investigation [by] the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
Allen didn’t wish to speculate as to what that investigation may in the end discover. “Would I ever be shocked that anyone else can be named?” he mentioned. “I [wouldn’t] at this level, actually, when it comes to what occurred prior to now earlier than I used to be right here after which what occurred months into my tenure….We have seen this factor blow up within the final 16, 17, 18 months. Nothing at this level actually surprises me anymore.”
In his KRQE interview, Allen appeared extra upset in regards to the FBI investigation than he was in regards to the corruption it had uncovered. However yesterday, he sounded appropriately involved in regards to the latter. “This is not a black eye to the company,” he mentioned. “It is a intestine punch. It is a kick to my balls and two black eyes, to be trustworthy with you.” Public belief in regulation enforcement “is totally misplaced,” he admitted, “and we now have to rebuild it.”
