A Consent Decree Disaster with Sean Willoughby

Transcript

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You know it happens in every single department.

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You have an entire generation of police leaders that are just pretty much lucky to be there because they work their way up the ranks and they have no comprehension of what is about to happen to their police department.

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They have no ideology or understanding of methodology.

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They're basically bringing business practices that are used in T-Mobile and major corporations and trying to apply them to police work, and it took us probably six years for our administration and a change of a mayor in Albuquerque to even figure out what the hell was going on with this consent decree.

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Welcome to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates, where leaders find the insights, advice and encouragement they need to lead courageously.

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Those of you on our podcast platforms.

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Yes, you're getting the audio, but we also have this on video.

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We'll put the link down in the podcast notes at where to get the video, but we're testing this out and there was no better person to do it than Sean Willoughby.

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He's the president of the Albuquerque Police Officer Association and, sean, you've been doing that for 12 years, which you've been on, I believe, over 20.

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What got you into this?

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Because you are in the middle of the briars nest, right when you're a president of an association defending officers rights.

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Well, I'll tell you this.

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I started out my career.

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I did five years in field services and then I became a detective for about three to four years and my union was going through some turmoil at the time.

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We had some bad characters at the helm and I was on the board at that particular time and I got bamboozled into going into management and I've been here ever since, but it's been probably the most rewarding part of my police career.

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I love representing the rank and file.

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Police officers don't have an honest voice in any conversation.

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They're not allowed to speak on their own behalf.

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So I take great pride and pleasure in representing the rank and file of my department in a non-apologetically, non-politically gaining way.

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You guys take the brunt of a lot of heat because you are able to stand up for a profession.

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Because, as most people don't understand, if you're inside a police department working under policies and procedures, you can't speak out.

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That's true.

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You have to just sit there and just take it.

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And so the reason that I Albuquerque is on my radar.

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First of all, I've been to Albuquerque a whole lot in the last decade or so.

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I really love your city.

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I've done some work for your city attorneys there in the past and as we're looking at what's going on in Phoenix with the DLJ consent decree investigation where that's where these investigations track as a consent decree obviously you guys have been under one for a number of years and they were talking about some of the people in the news.

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The media is not that honest about this right.

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DOJ and police reform.

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That's all feels good and the media likes to talk about it, but when you really look at the last 30 years of this stuff, it's disaster and chaos in cities.

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And when I saw them talk about the success of Albuquerque and you know they're 94% compliance and they've been and your chief was on there talking about how this is a good thing I literally thought to myself well, I know for a fact that's not true and I went and looked at some data and found out what truth.

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But where were you at the union when the DLJ came to town?

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Was it just been 10, 11 years ago?

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10, 11 years, I was the president of the Albuquerque Police Officers Association.

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I have been involved in this disaster from the very beginning.

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Well then, let's take us all the way back to where Phoenix is right now the investigation is going on and just tell our audience and folks those of you who've been paying attention to the consent decree stuff maybe you think we're talking about it too much, but this is literally the crisis of our time.

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Every city that DLJ has been to has turned that city into far worse, and Roland Fryer, as we talked about, a Harvard professor, very highly esteemed his research.

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Peer research says more people die because of consent decrees, and so we're now talking to somebody involved in this in the very beginning.

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So you're, let's take you all the way back to where the investigation is going on.

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Kind of what's your?

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How are you thinking about what's kind of going on during that time period?

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Well, we had in 2010,.

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We had an uptick in three to four years of officer involved shootings, I think over the course of a four year time we had 14.

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We had a very small group of extremely motivated parents that got involved in city council meetings and started to bring some disdain against the police department.

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Of course they regardless of whether it was justified or not those were their kids and they felt like the police department could have done something different than shoot and kill their loved one.

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No matter how you slice the apple, it's a tragedy when an officer has to use lethal force.

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So we kind of saw the DOJ coming.

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They were poking around Albuquerque.

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The chief at the time, raymond Schultz, went to Perf.

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Perf came in and did an analytics of our department, which was just-.

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That was his first mistake.

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Right, perf was our first mistake.

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Yeah, we're all the East Coast chiefs.

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Go to die Perf.

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Right Having them help you.

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What a waste of money.

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And they came in and we had about 84 to 90 policy changes that were kind of rubber stamped.

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Nobody really did any significant training.

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They didn't really change much.

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All they did was change the dynamics of a police officer's job and, without the proper training, put them in a position to get in trouble for policy changes.

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So we had the policy changes about, I would say, six to eight months prior to the DOJ coming into Albuquerque with their infamous pattern and practice cut and paste letter that they've given to every single police department in the history of their existence.

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Our pattern and practice level really surrounds about around force.

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We have a pretty diverse community here.

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Our police department is a reflection of our community.

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They were not able to tag us with, you know, race baiting or treating different races differently.

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There was no data to support that.

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So our consent decree really focused on how we dealt with the mental health and the homeless and how we dealt with force investigations, force documentation.

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It really all combusted around force.

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And then you know it happens in every single department.

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You have an entire generation of police leaders that are just pretty much lucky to be there because they work their way up the ranks and they have no comprehension of what is about to happen to their police department.

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They have no ideology or understanding of methodology.

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They're basically bringing business practices that are used in T-Mobile and major corporations and trying to apply them to police work.

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And it took us probably six years for our administration and a change of a mayor in Albuquerque to even figure out what the hell was going on with this consent decree.

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The Consent Decree touched about 244 paragraphs and those 244 paragraphs have been the result of just thousands of changes when it comes to policies and procedures and documentation and artificial intelligence and random audits.

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I mean, you name it.

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These guys are going through it.

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And just to put it in perspective, you know our sister agency is the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Department and they're much smaller than we are.

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There's approximately 450 officers to our under a thousand in Albuquerque, but last year they had like 14 internal affairs investigations in that entire agency and that's compared to our almost 1800.

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And 1800 internal affairs investigations times about four to five officers.

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I mean our officers cannot breathe without going into internal affairs.

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This whole process has destroyed this community.

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It has made Albuquerque less safe.

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We have a less competent, a less effective police department as a result of it, and I really hope I'm so disappointed in our profession.

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Right, you know I've been doing this job professionally for more than a decade now.

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I take great pride in being the voice of the rank and file.

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It's an important job and they don't have anybody really sticking up for them in this country.

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But our profession I mean the data's there, mr Yates, it's there Every single community that has touched this consent decree process has failed.

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They have a track record of having a fail.

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It's proven to a failure.

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It makes communities less safe.

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It exacerbates the staffing problems that everybody's already having and you know, 10 years from now, phoenix will understand how ridiculous this is.

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Hopefully they don't have to go through it.

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But I mean, it is an epic failure of major proportion.

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It has cost our community over $100 million from its conception and they're really.

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I really don't have any positives that I can say about being involved in this bureaucracy called DOJ Consent Decrees.

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It's just ridiculous.

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And just so our audience understands, you don't have to enter in a consent decree, the process.

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The DOJ comes to town and, as they've done in Phoenix, they pull 10 years of data, terabytes of data, thousands of body cams.

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I mean, if you look that hard in any organization for a decade, you're going to find a few examples you don't like and they call that a pattern in practice.

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And so I know for a fact.

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I have a source there in Albuquerque because I read what the DOJ wrote about you over 10 years ago.

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They said you had 20 fatality shootings in the previous three years and their quote was I'm going to paraphrase the vast majority were constitutional violations against people's civil rights.

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Now, when I read that and my immediately thought was because I've kind of had some common sense here is why didn't they arrest the officers?

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If all these officers are violating people's constitutional rights, that's a federal crime.

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Where are the arrests?

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Where's the evidence?

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And I talked to a source in Albuquerque and they said that's because none of them were unconstitutional.

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That's just what the DOJ said.

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So they say it in a summary report.

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They make everybody think Albuquerque is this horrible police department because they had 20 shootings in the last three years.

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They come to town, as you said.

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They completely destroy your city.

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We'll get in those details of where crime is, but I don't know where your shootings are today, because I looked it up.

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So they came to town because the previous three years you had 20 fatality shootings.

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From 2022, backtrack three years because I don't have 23 yet you had 30 fatality shootings, an increase of 33%, and my source tells me that when the 23 data comes out, you may have broken the 2022 record of fatality shootings.

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So here we have.

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We're talking about 10, 11 years later.

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The DOJ has been in your city and your city, just on that category alone, is much worse, while the DOJ is claiming it's so going so great in Albuquerque.

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It defies common sense, does it not?

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Yes, it's absolutely egregious.

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Last year alone we had 22 officer-involved shootings in this agency.

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Much of our officer-involved shootings in this agency today are a derivative of poor policies, bad practices and limitations for officers to use and being able to utilize these less lethal options.

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They want us to deescalate everybody and talk everybody into handcuffs willingly, which is an unrealistic expectation.

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And in this agency, the real kicker is the definition of passive and active resisting.

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If you look into our policy, active resisting in this agency which is what opens up the force of less lethal force Taser, 40 millimeter Nerf round or your beanbag, even an ass the only thing that opens up those categories is being physically attacked by an individual or they are physically attacking somebody else.

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So for years we have been faced with officers literally not being allowed, because of policy, to use less lethal options unless these two criteria are met and they're facing an extensive disciplinary rap sheet of violating the force policy if they do so.

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Trying to deescalate everybody, which automatically led to these situations escalating to where they had to use lethal force.

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There's a ton of individuals that have been shot in Albuquerque by the police that, in my opinion, shouldn't have been shot with a bullet.

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They should have been dealt with earlier with a Taser or a less lethal option, but our policy didn't allow it, and that's thanks to the DOJ.

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Yeah, I wanna really break this down for our audience because I've actually seen this anecdotally across the country.

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As agencies implement deescalation policies, their shootings are actually increasing and nobody wants to go back and look at this because this deescalation sounds good, it makes people feel good, but if they looked at the actual data not only in Albuquerque but other cities and once one research came out at NYPD the force is actually going up.

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And here's why you just explained it, sir.

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You just said when you don't let officers deal with anything and tell it's too late, then their only option is deadly force.

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But if you let them deal with it before that because that's really what the idea of deescalation is as soon as you see a pre-attack indicator, somebody's acting funny, go some handcuffs on them, get your hands on them, get control of them.

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Then they can't get you down the road where it ends up deadly forces having to be used.

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But nobody's looking at this nobody, in fact.

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They're lying to the public.

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They're telling your public things are so much better when you look at the data.

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Just on that alone, it's not.

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It's not better.

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They are lying to the public.

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But this is the deal.

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The public, we're all not very far away from each other, right?

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We just wanna live and we wanna be safe.

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We want our kids to go to school and not be bullied.

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We wanna live in an environment where we feel safe and we can have a good job and have a good life.

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The reality inside Albuquerque is that the public doesn't know because nobody's telling the story.

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Number one.

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Number two they're not really interested in the dynamics In this language called DOJ Consent Decrees.

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It is a very dynamic language.

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It is hard.

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We have been trying relentlessly for years to tell folks what is really going on here, but it just goes over their head.

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It's really hard to convey this message in a dynamic way.

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So folks understand that they're being bamboozled and lied to, but they just don't have time.

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Yeah, I mean, I agree, when you look at consent decrees, people want to see a headline, they want to see a summary and they want to move on in the road.

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But it takes time to explain to people why this is bad and that's why I think you know we I got on here because I've been paying attention to Phoenix and they are not into a consent decree yet but that what they did was historic is is their city counselors recognized the bad track record in Albuquerque under cities and they just file, said we're not interested.

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We think we're the best of performance agency.

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Here's what we've already done.

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We're not at all interested.

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Why don't more cities do that?

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Because you will never convince me that anybody in law enforcement thinks the DOJ is a good thing if they have a brain, because it you can see clearly.

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There's nothing more.

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I've been convinced about my life.

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Then these are bad because when you look at every city they've been to, the data is there.

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Oh yeah, I think the reason why they do it.

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Number one, they're stupid.

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Number two, they're lazy.

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And number three there, most of them, most of these decisions, are being made by politicians who are used to rubber stamping everything.

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For instance, rj Barry and the city council that opened the door wide for DOJ to come into Albuquerque.

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They literally signed that consent decree and their number one mission was to be the the fastest, the best, and they were just gonna get out of this, this consent decree, in two years.

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You watch how we get this done.

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They don't have a clue.

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They don't have a clue the tentacles of this degree and how to change the culture.

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You know you said something earlier.

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Yeah, something as simple.

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A lot of your audience will appreciate target glancing.

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This is a very rudimentary Concept that is trained to cadets of our era, your era.

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You know what target glancing is right and somebody's gonna run from you or they're gonna take your gun.

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They're gonna have to look at it first.

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We're not allowed to comment on target glancing in this agency.

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Even though it's science, even though there's clear yeah, you know, there's clear science on it.

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Yeah, that behavioral indicator of an attack or a fleeing situation Is not real in the Albuquerque police department.

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They've taken that away from us.

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But my concern is this so people like me and people like you and other older officers that are getting ready to retire we were trained in these things to keep us alive and to do a good job we're all retiring and the next generation of Albuquerque cops they have been raised and grown up in this environment.

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So I believe that the shootings will.

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We will continue.

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They will continue to tick up.

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When it when we had an uptick, that was Five to seven to ten officer involved shootings in one year.

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Now we're up to 22.

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We're up, we're over 14 this year.

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Like it's, it's absolutely egregious and there's no going back.

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All of the individuals who know how to do police work and know how to do it safely, with common core, respects for the community, at the same time not putting up with any nonsense they're gone.

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So the whole next generation of these cities involved in consent decrees there, they're in for a disaster.

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Yeah, it'll be nobody there that would know how to go back to normal, because those are the only ones there.

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That's correct.

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So when you look at what Phoenix has done, it's, it's nothing short of a miracle at the fifth largest city in America, tells the DOJ, by the way, mainly Democratic politicians.

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And that deal, jay's aligned that way.

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How did out?

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How did Phoenix pull that off?

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Because I still look at this.

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I look at the stories coming out of there going why did they get it?

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No one else did what?

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Are you familiar with what happened there and how they were able to at least Get to this point, to whether or not just signing over a consent decree?

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By the way, I just need to know this.

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The DOJ makes you sign for a consent decree before you actually see the investigation.

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So I would Kirk you signed it, didn't even look at it.

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Yeah, we were about the.

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POA wasn't even allowed to be present during the negotiation of the consent decree.

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That was a closed door and I think that there's a dynamic in Phoenix that we don't have in Albuquerque they have.

00:18:06.277 --> 00:18:08.003
They have a strong council system.

00:18:08.003 --> 00:18:11.575
So there's two systems of municipal government in this country.

00:18:11.575 --> 00:18:17.366
You either have a weak mayor strong council or a strong, or a strong council weak mayor system.

00:18:17.366 --> 00:18:31.181
In Phoenix they have a weak mayor system and when you have a strong council system, you're going to have different personalities who are politicians that come from different backgrounds, some of them Democrats, some of them Republican that really need to blend and meet in the middle.

00:18:31.561 --> 00:18:34.489
The truth and the reality is we've all seen this song and dance.

00:18:34.489 --> 00:18:36.582
Consent decrees have been around for 30 years.

00:18:36.582 --> 00:18:49.580
Everybody that knows anything about this topic knows that they are unsuccessful and all they do is lead to increased crime, further decay of your police department staffing levels and Less effective, less efficient police department.

00:18:49.580 --> 00:18:52.025
So I think that some folks are coming around.

00:18:52.025 --> 00:18:52.645
You have a.

00:18:52.645 --> 00:18:54.829
You have a strong union in Phoenix.

00:18:54.829 --> 00:18:57.500
I'm a good friends with, with the.

00:18:57.500 --> 00:19:04.186
We have a great long-standing relationship with, with the, the Phoenix, with plea and the Phoenix Association.

00:19:04.186 --> 00:19:07.446
We have had extensive conversations with them.

00:19:07.446 --> 00:19:09.174
We've shown them policies.

00:19:09.174 --> 00:19:19.364
They know exactly the disaster that Albuquerque is is involved in right now and they don't want anything to do with it and in my opinion, they're probably conveying that data to the people that matter.

00:19:19.364 --> 00:19:23.826
And Phoenix is like wait a minute, this is not what it's cracked up to be.

00:19:23.826 --> 00:19:31.295
And the truth is they're gonna be more successful If we had individuals fighting for taxpayer dollars and for the police department on our side.

00:19:31.295 --> 00:19:33.144
We would already be out of this.

00:19:33.144 --> 00:19:35.414
Maybe we would have a memorandum of understanding.

00:19:35.414 --> 00:19:39.305
Maybe we would have, you know, guidance and some other stuff.

00:19:39.305 --> 00:19:46.647
These talking points the DOJ likes to call just to infuse training and their, their political ideologies on police departments.

00:19:46.835 --> 00:19:50.906
It's also important for your listeners None of these people are cops, not one of them.

00:19:50.906 --> 00:19:59.846
There's a whole room full of taxpayer funded attorneys that all got great grades in school, that have never been punched in the face, not one time in their life.

00:19:59.846 --> 00:20:02.134
They've never had to go on a domestic violence call.

00:20:02.134 --> 00:20:03.979
They've never had to save anybody.

00:20:03.979 --> 00:20:07.468
They've never been a human being that has to make a split second decision.

00:20:07.468 --> 00:20:08.981
You know, I'm a father of five.

00:20:08.981 --> 00:20:10.892
I'm a father of five kids.

00:20:10.892 --> 00:20:11.515
I'm married.

00:20:11.515 --> 00:20:14.604
I don't want to go to work and have to get into an officer involved shooting.

00:20:14.604 --> 00:20:16.819
You know, we're not built that way.

00:20:16.819 --> 00:20:18.405
We're human beings like everybody.

00:20:18.405 --> 00:20:25.805
None of those people that are on that table that are dictating policies and this bureaucracy Not one of them have done this job.

00:20:25.805 --> 00:20:26.627
Not one.

00:20:26.627 --> 00:20:33.875
So from the jump, it's just calm, it's just disrespect and a lack of understanding of what the reality of our career is.

00:20:33.875 --> 00:20:35.137
It's like they're.

00:20:35.137 --> 00:20:42.603
They're using it as a funnel to change policing to their political ideological desire.

00:20:43.496 --> 00:20:45.442
Well, yeah, I think after 30 years there's no question.

00:20:45.442 --> 00:20:49.226
In fact, thankfully that the head honchos in the civil rights division.

00:20:49.226 --> 00:20:51.815
They have actually verbally said that we want to reimagine police.

00:20:51.815 --> 00:20:53.420
So this has nothing to do with police reform.

00:20:53.420 --> 00:20:57.070
It's about changing the ideological what policing actually is.

00:20:57.070 --> 00:21:03.674
And probably for them they're being pretty successful, even though more people are being shot, more officers are leaving the department.

00:21:03.674 --> 00:21:05.500
It's crime is higher.

00:21:05.500 --> 00:21:07.366
What about the crime in Albuquerque?

00:21:07.366 --> 00:21:08.470
I mean, I looked at the data.

00:21:08.470 --> 00:21:09.934
I saw it was significantly higher.

00:21:09.934 --> 00:21:12.381
I think your murder rate 22 was a record.

00:21:12.381 --> 00:21:14.767
I think it's tracking very, very high last year.

00:21:14.767 --> 00:21:17.555
So the violence is much higher than it was when the deal j came.

00:21:17.555 --> 00:21:19.482
Does anybody try to explain it to people?

00:21:19.482 --> 00:21:21.973
Does anybody even ask that question or do we don't even care about?

00:21:22.034 --> 00:21:22.214
crime.

00:21:22.214 --> 00:21:24.058
We do it all the time.

00:21:24.058 --> 00:21:27.407
We've done so many stories on the increase of violent crime of our community.

00:21:27.407 --> 00:21:29.278
Albuquerque is not safe.

00:21:29.278 --> 00:21:30.843
Our community members.

00:21:30.843 --> 00:21:32.928
I've been born, I'm born and raised in this community.

00:21:32.928 --> 00:21:38.857
I know this town, I know this state, the people that live here, they don't feel safe, they don't want to go out at night.

00:21:38.857 --> 00:21:46.319
Property crime is through the roof to such an extent the response time for property crime is so dismal they don't even report it anymore.

00:21:46.319 --> 00:21:49.428
And when they're not reporting the crime, what happens to the category?

00:21:49.428 --> 00:21:50.530
It goes down.

00:21:50.530 --> 00:21:55.742
And these politicians, tout that they've done so great in property crime dismissal.

00:21:55.762 --> 00:21:58.568
Yeah, but you can't stop violent crime because that gets reported.

00:21:58.568 --> 00:22:00.280
That's why that's all the time.

00:22:00.461 --> 00:22:01.464
See how they do it here.

00:22:01.464 --> 00:22:13.049
So if, if Albuquerque PD Makes an arrest on a cold case from 1972 today, they get to calculate that number in this year's data.

00:22:13.049 --> 00:22:27.035
So every arrest that they make with homicide detectives in cold case that are from years, previous, situations that everybody's already forgot about, we get to calculate that in our numbers this year due to FBI standards.

00:22:27.035 --> 00:22:28.565
So the numbers are a whack.

00:22:28.565 --> 00:22:29.934
The chief will get up there in town.

00:22:29.934 --> 00:22:34.800
You know we're 110% In the green.

00:22:34.800 --> 00:22:36.105
We're changing the world.

00:22:36.105 --> 00:22:38.490
Albuquerque is the safest place in on the planet.

00:22:38.490 --> 00:22:39.755
It's all BS.

00:22:39.755 --> 00:22:44.530
It's all crap has nothing to do with anything because of the way they calculate the numbers.

00:22:44.892 --> 00:22:50.897
It's all a sham in your opinion you, is there any way back for Albuquerque?

00:22:50.897 --> 00:22:53.045
I mean because eventually the DLJ will leave.

00:22:53.045 --> 00:22:54.569
I mean it may be another five.

00:22:54.569 --> 00:22:57.881
I know the DLJ is usually oh, they're 94%, comply, they've done this or that.

00:22:57.881 --> 00:23:06.911
Compliance doesn't mean anything about safety, it doesn't mean your office, your department's, better, it just means you've done whatever they've said and they may not leave another five or six, seven, eight, nine, ten years, who knows?

00:23:06.911 --> 00:23:12.443
They're usually in an apartment about 15, 16 years because there's so much money being made by whoever is working for them.

00:23:12.443 --> 00:23:16.170
Yep, is there any way back for a C-lock Albuquerque?

00:23:16.170 --> 00:23:16.770
Because lots of no.

00:23:16.830 --> 00:23:21.160
I mean my personal opinion my personal opinion is absolutely not.

00:23:21.160 --> 00:23:37.324
Our consent decree requires us to be 95% consent, 95% compliant in all 244 paragraphs, monitored by a third party cottage industry old, old man that was a police officer in the 60s.

00:23:37.324 --> 00:23:39.935
He's making millions of dollars a year.

00:23:39.935 --> 00:23:42.163
There's no real motivation for him to get out of here.

00:23:42.163 --> 00:23:50.602
The as soon as we achieve 95% compliant, we have two years of self monitoring that the DOJ is involved in.

00:23:50.602 --> 00:23:53.970
So at the Soonest DOJ could be out of Albuquerque.

00:23:53.970 --> 00:24:05.670
We've got at least three years in front of us and if we have any hiccups along the way Then we're out of compliance and we start the two-year progression of trying to get back into compliance again with the monitor.

00:24:05.670 --> 00:24:08.849
So these things are designed not to let you out of them.

00:24:08.930 --> 00:24:21.781
Well, and they put things in there that they know you can't do like I noticed I think it was, I forget what city that they they require every patrol officer spend 20 minutes every hour in community policing and the cops are like we can't comply with this.

00:24:21.781 --> 00:24:23.190
We're going from call to call to call.

00:24:23.190 --> 00:24:25.317
They're like well, you have to comply to get out of the consent decree.

00:24:25.892 --> 00:24:36.316
They put rules on you you cannot comply with yeah, it's, it's once a month, I think once a month the officer has to attend a community meeting, so on and so forth.

00:24:36.316 --> 00:24:39.045
But I mean, we're so understaffed.

00:24:39.045 --> 00:24:42.875
These guys are answering 83,000 calls for service a month.

00:24:42.875 --> 00:24:47.266
Less than want, less than a fraction of a percent result in force at all.

00:24:47.266 --> 00:24:52.298
And in this, in this agency, we calculate force, unlike any other agency.

00:24:52.298 --> 00:25:07.506
If I touch you, if I put my hands on you in a very gentle fashion, if I have to overcome any resistance to get your hands behind your back, if it's perceived in my video, that's a use of force, it's calculated as a use of force.

00:25:07.506 --> 00:25:14.123
And about 2000 taxpayer man hours go into investigating that use of force in this agency.

00:25:14.123 --> 00:25:19.155
It's, it's a, it's a yeah, yeah, yeah, it is so ridiculous.

00:25:19.355 --> 00:25:20.560
It's so insane.

00:25:20.560 --> 00:25:22.536
Most people wouldn't even believe it.

00:25:22.958 --> 00:25:26.109
Most know that they just literally don't believe anything could be like that.

00:25:26.109 --> 00:25:29.179
But you're living it right now, yeah, and let me tell you.

00:25:29.179 --> 00:25:38.473
Let me tell you right now, sean, the reason the consent decree cannot come in for a couple years and leave, like Albuquerque you may have thought, or even ten years.

00:25:38.473 --> 00:25:45.380
If you're trying to reimagine a police agency, police culture, then you got to be there for a generation of cops.

00:25:45.380 --> 00:25:47.869
So how most cops leave it 20, 25 years.

00:25:47.869 --> 00:25:53.130
So if the vast majority of that 25 year officer's career of the DOJ was there, they're done.

00:25:53.130 --> 00:25:54.952
That's what I think policing is.

00:25:54.952 --> 00:25:58.118
So that's why they stay so long in these agencies.

00:25:58.799 --> 00:25:59.701
Oh yeah, I totally.

00:25:59.701 --> 00:26:00.583
I think that that.

00:26:00.583 --> 00:26:01.525
I agree with that.

00:26:01.525 --> 00:26:06.150
I think that that's what they're doing here in Albuquerque and it's my number one fear.

00:26:06.150 --> 00:26:10.448
It's also the reason I don't think there's any hope for Albuquerque going forward.

00:26:10.448 --> 00:26:20.679
You know, I mean right, whether you have a good, a strong counsel or a strong mayor, or however your political ideology is set up, after you go through something like this, I don't have any faith.

00:26:20.739 --> 00:26:26.098
And in the next Politician that governs Albuquerque after DOJ, what, what do they all do?

00:26:26.098 --> 00:26:27.141
We see it time.

00:26:27.141 --> 00:26:27.843
Look at Seattle.

00:26:27.843 --> 00:26:31.609
We're we're gonna take these reforms so seriously.

00:26:31.609 --> 00:26:37.645
We're gonna hire a civil rights attorney from the DOJ that destroyed our department to monitor that we.

00:26:37.645 --> 00:26:39.893
We're gonna continue these reforms.

00:26:39.893 --> 00:26:45.750
So when you get your police department back, you're not gonna change common-sense policies to allow your cops to go back to work.

00:26:45.750 --> 00:26:47.434
You're not gonna retrain them.

00:26:47.434 --> 00:26:52.738
You're not gonna take the good, expel the bad and go down the the street.

00:26:52.738 --> 00:27:02.553
You're actually a politician, so you're gonna give your base what you think they want and you're gonna make sure that these reforms stick and, before you know what, your department is destroyed.

00:27:02.953 --> 00:27:03.715
Yeah, pretty soon.

00:27:03.715 --> 00:27:06.182
Nobody that the department remembers how it used to be.

00:27:06.182 --> 00:27:09.193
They just this is normal, right, so that.

00:27:09.193 --> 00:27:14.180
So Obviously, there's just no arguing how bad these are.

00:27:14.180 --> 00:27:29.410
If you're someone listening and they're concerned about a deal J investigation or the deal, j's coming into town, which, by the way, this is always mind-numbing to me Phoenix has spent six million dollars in the last two and a half years To help the deal J investigate them, to destroy them.

00:27:29.410 --> 00:27:34.315
I don't know about you, sean, but we don't get to knock on anyone's door and go hey, we're conducting investigation on you.

00:27:34.315 --> 00:27:35.880
You need to write me a check to do that.

00:27:35.880 --> 00:27:41.993
Why we are paying for this for them is Insane to me, because it's not like they're gonna go.

00:27:41.993 --> 00:27:44.800
Thank you for cooperating, bye-bye, no, they're gonna go.

00:27:44.800 --> 00:27:45.702
Thank you for cooperating.

00:27:45.702 --> 00:27:47.698
Now we're gonna take another couple hundred million from you.

00:27:47.698 --> 00:27:50.880
So it's amazing to me how weak leaders are when it comes to this.

00:27:50.880 --> 00:27:52.594
But what?

00:27:52.614 --> 00:27:54.701
would you tell a afraid of the federal government?

00:27:55.371 --> 00:28:04.809
Yeah, and and I want to just point this out to people that may not understand or may not be able to read we should never be afraid of the federal government because we have this little thing called the 10th Amendment.

00:28:04.809 --> 00:28:11.993
The federal government does not have the power to control a police department, to control a state, control a local community, because the 10th Amendment.

00:28:11.993 --> 00:28:18.390
Our founding fathers knew that if you gave the federal government that kind of power they would do this little thing called consent decrees and destroy cities.

00:28:18.390 --> 00:28:21.900
But they just knew the federal government is not the solution.

00:28:21.900 --> 00:28:27.797
And so the 10th Amendment says that the federal government's powers are Containing the Constitution only as it complains to the state.

00:28:27.797 --> 00:28:31.564
So once the Constitution tells them they can do it, they have no control over a state.

00:28:31.564 --> 00:28:35.809
Clearly they do if you let them, if you volunteer for it.

00:28:36.171 --> 00:28:42.384
No one's ever taken this up to the courts to say how unconstitutional is, but it is to anybody that can read the Constitution.

00:28:42.384 --> 00:28:43.394
It's clear in there.

00:28:43.394 --> 00:28:52.895
It says that, with all that in mind and the cost of just the investigation and obviously the constitutional issues there and the failures of 30 years, what would you tell an agency that's facing this?

00:28:52.895 --> 00:28:53.779
What would you tell them to do?

00:28:53.779 --> 00:28:54.830
Fight?

00:28:55.532 --> 00:29:01.809
I mean, at the end of the day, you have an obligation to your taxpayers and your community to fight these, these.

00:29:01.809 --> 00:29:04.836
I mean it is so grandiose.

00:29:04.836 --> 00:29:11.116
So you know, like they said in Albuquerque that a majority of our Shootings, when being analyzed, were unconstitutional.

00:29:11.116 --> 00:29:12.721
Well, I want, I want them to prove it.

00:29:12.721 --> 00:29:14.678
Let's go to court, prove it.

00:29:14.678 --> 00:29:20.970
Prove that it's unconstitutional, because all of those were looked at criminally and nobody was charged.

00:29:20.970 --> 00:29:22.615
We had the Boyd situation.

00:29:22.615 --> 00:29:30.789
Those officers were acquitted, but you know they talk a lot of trash and they feed into a community's truth default.

00:29:31.111 --> 00:29:36.829
We had busloads of people that don't even live in Albuquerque come to Albuquerque to protest.

00:29:36.829 --> 00:29:46.354
Somebody paid people to get on a bus and come to a community that they don't reside in to protest anti-police ideology.

00:29:46.354 --> 00:29:56.849
This is all a systematic Try to break down the trust between the police department and the community and take authority away from your police officers.

00:29:56.849 --> 00:30:01.545
It is absolutely destroyed, albuquerque, and it will continue to do so.

00:30:01.545 --> 00:30:03.089
Albuquerque is not safe.

00:30:03.089 --> 00:30:07.086
I would never live in the city limits and I mean I think it's so bad.

00:30:07.086 --> 00:30:08.530
When I retire, we may move.

00:30:08.530 --> 00:30:15.144
I may pick up my family and move to a smaller town and a safer community, because I don't want my kids growing up here.

00:30:15.830 --> 00:30:19.181
Yeah, I need people to understand that what Sean is saying is not over the top.

00:30:19.181 --> 00:30:20.835
It's exactly right.

00:30:20.835 --> 00:30:22.340
I hear about this in every city.

00:30:22.340 --> 00:30:24.569
The deal Jay's been in this is what it does.

00:30:24.569 --> 00:30:26.196
There's no going back to it.

00:30:26.196 --> 00:30:31.996
And when you say fight, the interesting thing, sean, is the deal Jay Never really has had to show their cards.

00:30:31.996 --> 00:30:35.002
They come in town, they say really bad things about Albuquerque.

00:30:35.002 --> 00:30:37.298
Here's a quick summary of ten years information.

00:30:37.298 --> 00:30:37.471
There's.

00:30:37.490 --> 00:30:45.349
The three examples were showing you or something that effect and they're and they're doing all this stuff and, like I said the first time I read it when I said by later on, was constitutional.

00:30:45.349 --> 00:30:46.617
Where's the criminal charges?

00:30:46.617 --> 00:30:47.442
And of course, you collect.

00:30:47.442 --> 00:30:54.664
Obviously it's not there, but the DOJ is going to have a difficult time if they ever have to show evidence.

00:30:54.664 --> 00:31:02.121
That's why I believe that the fight wouldn't last long, because if you get to discover because what the DOJ would do, people that don't understand.

00:31:02.121 --> 00:31:10.644
If you say I'm not going to sign for something I don't even know about, you're not even telling me what's going on here, so we're not going to sign it they then have to go to federal court and file a lawsuit against the city and the agency.

00:31:10.644 --> 00:31:18.929
Well, in court, you have to show evidence, and so the first part of that would be discovery, would be discovery.

00:31:18.929 --> 00:31:21.415
I don't think a DOJ ever gets past discovery.

00:31:21.415 --> 00:31:22.973
That's why you fight them.

00:31:22.973 --> 00:31:24.644
They can never go past discovery.

00:31:25.228 --> 00:31:28.644
There's so much fear with this process and there's ignorance.

00:31:28.644 --> 00:31:32.625

A Consent Decree Disaster with Sean Willoughby

Shaun Willoughby

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