When the rules of engagement change on the streets, what happens to the guardians keeping the peace? Sean Willoughby, president of the Albuquerque Police Officers Association, steps into the spotlight to shed light on the stark realities of police reform under DOJ consent decrees. Through Sean's lens, we uncover the consequences these changes have wrought on the Albuquerque Police Department: a rise in officer-involved shootings, strained budgets, and a workforce grappling with the chasm between theory and practice.
As we peel back the layers of oversight, Sean's story unveils the paradox of deescalation policies leading to more fatal encounters, and the mounting pressures on officers to comply with often burdensome reforms. The narrative moves us through the city's law enforcement ecosystem, revealing the complexities of balancing constitutional protections against federal intervention and the intricate dance of local governments funding investigations into their own police forces. This episode is a wake-up call to consider the efficacy of DOJ decrees, the cultural shifts within police departments, and the broader implications for public safety.
You can watch the video version of this podcast here.
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Join Our Tribe of Courageous Leaders:
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When the rules of engagement change on the streets, what happens to the guardians keeping the peace? Sean Willoughby, president of the Albuquerque Police Officers Association, steps into the spotlight to shed light on the stark realities of police reform under DOJ consent decrees. Through Sean's lens, we uncover the consequences these changes have wrought on the Albuquerque Police Department: a rise in officer-involved shootings, strained budgets, and a workforce grappling with the chasm between theory and practice.
As we peel back the layers of oversight, Sean's story unveils the paradox of deescalation policies leading to more fatal encounters, and the mounting pressures on officers to comply with often burdensome reforms. The narrative moves us through the city's law enforcement ecosystem, revealing the complexities of balancing constitutional protections against federal intervention and the intricate dance of local governments funding investigations into their own police forces. This episode is a wake-up call to consider the efficacy of DOJ decrees, the cultural shifts within police departments, and the broader implications for public safety.
You can watch the video version of this podcast here.
fEXfnt3ZGqKPhoEXpXPB
ZuY5hYzi8MYe78bjqVvb
Join Our Tribe of Courageous Leaders:
Get The Book
Get Weekly Articles by Travis Yates
Join Us At Our Website
Get Our 'Courageous Leadership' Training
Join The Courageous Police Leadership Alliance
You know it happens in every single department. 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. They have no ideology or understanding of methodology. 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.
Intro/Outro:Welcome to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates, where leaders find the insights, advice and encouragement they need to lead courageously.
Travis Yates:Those of you on our podcast platforms. Yes, you're getting the audio, but we also have this on video. 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. 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. What got you into this? Because you are in the middle of the briars nest, right when you're a president of an association defending officers rights.
Sean Willoughby:Well, I'll tell you this. I started out my career. 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. 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. I love representing the rank and file. Police officers don't have an honest voice in any conversation. They're not allowed to speak on their own behalf. So I take great pride and pleasure in representing the rank and file of my department in a non-apologetically, non-politically gaining way.
Travis Yates:You guys take the brunt of a lot of heat because you are able to stand up for a profession. Because, as most people don't understand, if you're inside a police department working under policies and procedures, you can't speak out.
Sean Willoughby:That's true. You have to just sit there and just take it.
Travis Yates:And so the reason that I Albuquerque is on my radar. First of all, I've been to Albuquerque a whole lot in the last decade or so. I really love your city. 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.
Travis Yates:The media is not that honest about this right. DOJ and police reform. 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. 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. But where were you at the union when the DLJ came to town? Was it just been 10, 11 years ago?
Sean Willoughby:10, 11 years, I was the president of the Albuquerque Police Officers Association. I have been involved in this disaster from the very beginning.
Travis Yates: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. 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. 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. So you're, let's take you all the way back to where the investigation is going on. Kind of what's your? How are you thinking about what's kind of going on during that time period?
Sean Willoughby:Well, we had in 2010,. 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. 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. 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. No matter how you slice the apple, it's a tragedy when an officer has to use lethal force. So we kind of saw the DOJ coming. They were poking around Albuquerque. The chief at the time, raymond Schultz, went to Perf. Perf came in and did an analytics of our department, which was just-.
Travis Yates:That was his first mistake. Right, perf was our first mistake. Yeah, we're all the East Coast chiefs. Go to die Perf. Right Having them help you.
Sean Willoughby:What a waste of money. And they came in and we had about 84 to 90 policy changes that were kind of rubber stamped. Nobody really did any significant training. They didn't really change much. 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. 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.
Sean Willoughby:Our pattern and practice level really surrounds about around force. We have a pretty diverse community here. Our police department is a reflection of our community. They were not able to tag us with, you know, race baiting or treating different races differently. There was no data to support that. 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. It really all combusted around force. And then you know it happens in every single department. 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. They have no ideology or understanding of methodology. 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.
Sean Willoughby: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. I mean, you name it. These guys are going through it. 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. 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. And 1800 internal affairs investigations times about four to five officers. I mean our officers cannot breathe without going into internal affairs.
Sean Willoughby:This whole process has destroyed this community. It has made Albuquerque less safe. 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. Right, you know I've been doing this job professionally for more than a decade now. I take great pride in being the voice of the rank and file. It's an important job and they don't have anybody really sticking up for them in this country. 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.
Sean Willoughby:They have a track record of having a fail. It's proven to a failure. It makes communities less safe. It exacerbates the staffing problems that everybody's already having and you know, 10 years from now, phoenix will understand how ridiculous this is. Hopefully they don't have to go through it. But I mean, it is an epic failure of major proportion. It has cost our community over $100 million from its conception and they're really. I really don't have any positives that I can say about being involved in this bureaucracy called DOJ Consent Decrees. It's just ridiculous.
Travis Yates:And just so our audience understands, you don't have to enter in a consent decree, the process. 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. 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. And so I know for a fact. I have a source there in Albuquerque because I read what the DOJ wrote about you over 10 years ago. 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. 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? If all these officers are violating people's constitutional rights, that's a federal crime. Where are the arrests? Where's the evidence?
Travis Yates:And I talked to a source in Albuquerque and they said that's because none of them were unconstitutional. That's just what the DOJ said. So they say it in a summary report. They make everybody think Albuquerque is this horrible police department because they had 20 shootings in the last three years. They come to town, as you said. They completely destroy your city. 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. So they came to town because the previous three years you had 20 fatality shootings. 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. So here we have. We're talking about 10, 11 years later. 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. It defies common sense, does it not?
Sean Willoughby:Yes, it's absolutely egregious. Last year alone we had 22 officer-involved shootings in this agency. 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. They want us to deescalate everybody and talk everybody into handcuffs willingly, which is an unrealistic expectation. And in this agency, the real kicker is the definition of passive and active resisting.
Sean Willoughby: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. 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. Trying to deescalate everybody, which automatically led to these situations escalating to where they had to use lethal force. 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. 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.
Travis Yates:Yeah, I wanna really break this down for our audience because I've actually seen this anecdotally across the country.
Travis Yates: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. And here's why you just explained it, sir. 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. 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. Then they can't get you down the road where it ends up deadly forces having to be used. But nobody's looking at this nobody, in fact. They're lying to the public. They're telling your public things are so much better when you look at the data. Just on that alone, it's not.
Sean Willoughby:It's not better. They are lying to the public. But this is the deal. The public, we're all not very far away from each other, right? We just wanna live and we wanna be safe. We want our kids to go to school and not be bullied. We wanna live in an environment where we feel safe and we can have a good job and have a good life. The reality inside Albuquerque is that the public doesn't know because nobody's telling the story. Number one. Number two they're not really interested in the dynamics In this language called DOJ Consent Decrees. It is a very dynamic language. It is hard. We have been trying relentlessly for years to tell folks what is really going on here, but it just goes over their head. It's really hard to convey this message in a dynamic way. So folks understand that they're being bamboozled and lied to, but they just don't have time.
Travis Yates: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. 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. We think we're the best of performance agency. Here's what we've already done. We're not at all interested. Why don't more cities do that? 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. There's nothing more. I've been convinced about my life. Then these are bad because when you look at every city they've been to, the data is there.
Sean Willoughby:Oh yeah, I think the reason why they do it. Number one, they're stupid. Number two, they're lazy. And number three there, most of them, most of these decisions, are being made by politicians who are used to rubber stamping everything. For instance, rj Barry and the city council that opened the door wide for DOJ to come into Albuquerque. 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. You watch how we get this done. They don't have a clue. They don't have a clue the tentacles of this degree and how to change the culture. You know you said something earlier. Yeah, something as simple. A lot of your audience will appreciate target glancing. This is a very rudimentary Concept that is trained to cadets of our era, your era. You know what target glancing is right and somebody's gonna run from you or they're gonna take your gun. They're gonna have to look at it first. We're not allowed to comment on target glancing in this agency.
Travis Yates:Even though it's science, even though there's clear yeah, you know, there's clear science on it.
Sean Willoughby:Yeah, that behavioral indicator of an attack or a fleeing situation Is not real in the Albuquerque police department. They've taken that away from us. 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. So I believe that the shootings will. We will continue. They will continue to tick up. When it when we had an uptick, that was Five to seven to ten officer involved shootings in one year. Now we're up to 22. We're up, we're over 14 this year. Like it's, it's absolutely egregious and there's no going back. 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. So the whole next generation of these cities involved in consent decrees there, they're in for a disaster.
Travis Yates:Yeah, it'll be nobody there that would know how to go back to normal, because those are the only ones there.
Sean Willoughby:That's correct.
Travis Yates: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. And that deal, jay's aligned that way. How did out? How did Phoenix pull that off? Because I still look at this. I look at the stories coming out of there going why did they get it? No one else did what? 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? By the way, I just need to know this. The DOJ makes you sign for a consent decree before you actually see the investigation. So I would Kirk you signed it, didn't even look at it. Yeah, we were about the.
Sean Willoughby:POA wasn't even allowed to be present during the negotiation of the consent decree. That was a closed door and I think that there's a dynamic in Phoenix that we don't have in Albuquerque they have. They have a strong council system. So there's two systems of municipal government in this country. You either have a weak mayor strong council or a strong, or a strong council weak mayor system. 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.
Sean Willoughby:The truth and the reality is we've all seen this song and dance. Consent decrees have been around for 30 years. 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. So I think that some folks are coming around. You have a. You have a strong union in Phoenix. I'm a good friends with, with the. We have a great long-standing relationship with, with the, the Phoenix, with plea and the Phoenix Association. We have had extensive conversations with them. We've shown them policies. 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. And Phoenix is like wait a minute, this is not what it's cracked up to be. 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. We would already be out of this. Maybe we would have a memorandum of understanding. Maybe we would have, you know, guidance and some other stuff. These talking points the DOJ likes to call just to infuse training and their, their political ideologies on police departments.
Sean Willoughby:It's also important for your listeners None of these people are cops, not one of them. 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. They've never had to go on a domestic violence call. They've never had to save anybody. They've never been a human being that has to make a split second decision. You know, I'm a father of five. I'm a father of five kids. I'm married. I don't want to go to work and have to get into an officer involved shooting. You know, we're not built that way. We're human beings like everybody. None of those people that are on that table that are dictating policies and this bureaucracy Not one of them have done this job. Not one. 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. It's like they're. They're using it as a funnel to change policing to their political ideological desire.
Travis Yates:Well, yeah, I think after 30 years there's no question. In fact, thankfully that the head honchos in the civil rights division. They have actually verbally said that we want to reimagine police. So this has nothing to do with police reform. It's about changing the ideological what policing actually is. And probably for them they're being pretty successful, even though more people are being shot, more officers are leaving the department. It's crime is higher. What about the crime in Albuquerque? I mean, I looked at the data. I saw it was significantly higher. I think your murder rate 22 was a record. I think it's tracking very, very high last year. So the violence is much higher than it was when the deal j came. Does anybody try to explain it to people? Does anybody even ask that question or do we don't even care about?
Sean Willoughby:crime. We do it all the time. We've done so many stories on the increase of violent crime of our community. Albuquerque is not safe. Our community members. I've been born, I'm born and raised in this community. 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. 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. And when they're not reporting the crime, what happens to the category? It goes down. And these politicians, tout that they've done so great in property crime dismissal.
Travis Yates:Yeah, but you can't stop violent crime because that gets reported. That's why that's all the time.
Sean Willoughby:See how they do it here. 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. 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. So the numbers are a whack. The chief will get up there in town. You know we're 110% In the green. We're changing the world. Albuquerque is the safest place in on the planet. It's all BS. It's all crap has nothing to do with anything because of the way they calculate the numbers.
Travis Yates:It's all a sham in your opinion you, is there any way back for Albuquerque? I mean because eventually the DLJ will leave. I mean it may be another five. I know the DLJ is usually oh, they're 94%, comply, they've done this or that. 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? They're usually in an apartment about 15, 16 years because there's so much money being made by whoever is working for them. Yep, is there any way back for a C-lock Albuquerque? Because lots of no.
Sean Willoughby:I mean my personal opinion my personal opinion is absolutely not. 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. He's making millions of dollars a year. There's no real motivation for him to get out of here. The as soon as we achieve 95% compliant, we have two years of self monitoring that the DOJ is involved in. So at the Soonest DOJ could be out of Albuquerque. 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. So these things are designed not to let you out of them.
Travis Yates: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. We're going from call to call to call. They're like well, you have to comply to get out of the consent decree.
Sean Willoughby: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. But I mean, we're so understaffed. These guys are answering 83,000 calls for service a month. Less than want, less than a fraction of a percent result in force at all. And in this, in this agency, we calculate force, unlike any other agency. 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. And about 2000 taxpayer man hours go into investigating that use of force in this agency. It's, it's a, it's a yeah, yeah, yeah, it is so ridiculous.
Travis Yates:It's so insane. Most people wouldn't even believe it.
Travis Yates:Most know that they just literally don't believe anything could be like that. But you're living it right now, yeah, and let me tell you. 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. If you're trying to reimagine a police agency, police culture, then you got to be there for a generation of cops. So how most cops leave it 20, 25 years. So if the vast majority of that 25 year officer's career of the DOJ was there, they're done. That's what I think policing is. So that's why they stay so long in these agencies.
Sean Willoughby:Oh yeah, I totally. I think that that. I agree with that. I think that that's what they're doing here in Albuquerque and it's my number one fear. It's also the reason I don't think there's any hope for Albuquerque going forward. 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.
Sean Willoughby:And in the next Politician that governs Albuquerque after DOJ, what, what do they all do? We see it time. Look at Seattle. We're we're gonna take these reforms so seriously. We're gonna hire a civil rights attorney from the DOJ that destroyed our department to monitor that we. We're gonna continue these reforms. 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. You're not gonna retrain them. You're not gonna take the good, expel the bad and go down the the street. 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.
Travis Yates:Yeah, pretty soon. Nobody that the department remembers how it used to be. They just this is normal, right, so that. So Obviously, there's just no arguing how bad these are. 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. 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. You need to write me a check to do that. Why we are paying for this for them is Insane to me, because it's not like they're gonna go. Thank you for cooperating, bye-bye, no, they're gonna go. Thank you for cooperating. Now we're gonna take another couple hundred million from you. So it's amazing to me how weak leaders are when it comes to this. But what?
Sean Willoughby:would you tell a afraid of the federal government?
Travis Yates: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. 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. 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. But they just knew the federal government is not the solution. And so the 10th Amendment says that the federal government's powers are Containing the Constitution only as it complains to the state. So once the Constitution tells them they can do it, they have no control over a state. Clearly they do if you let them, if you volunteer for it.
Travis Yates: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. It's clear in there. 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? What would you tell them to do? Fight?
Sean Willoughby:I mean, at the end of the day, you have an obligation to your taxpayers and your community to fight these, these. I mean it is so grandiose. So you know, like they said in Albuquerque that a majority of our Shootings, when being analyzed, were unconstitutional. Well, I want, I want them to prove it. Let's go to court, prove it. Prove that it's unconstitutional, because all of those were looked at criminally and nobody was charged. We had the Boyd situation. Those officers were acquitted, but you know they talk a lot of trash and they feed into a community's truth default.
Sean Willoughby:We had busloads of people that don't even live in Albuquerque come to Albuquerque to protest. Somebody paid people to get on a bus and come to a community that they don't reside in to protest anti-police ideology. 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. It is absolutely destroyed, albuquerque, and it will continue to do so. Albuquerque is not safe. I would never live in the city limits and I mean I think it's so bad. When I retire, we may move. 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.
Travis Yates:Yeah, I need people to understand that what Sean is saying is not over the top. It's exactly right. I hear about this in every city. The deal Jay's been in this is what it does. There's no going back to it. And when you say fight, the interesting thing, sean, is the deal Jay Never really has had to show their cards. They come in town, they say really bad things about Albuquerque. Here's a quick summary of ten years information. There's.
Travis Yates: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. Where's the criminal charges? And of course, you collect. Obviously it's not there, but the DOJ is going to have a difficult time if they ever have to show evidence. 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. 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. Well, in court, you have to show evidence, and so the first part of that would be discovery, would be discovery. I don't think a DOJ ever gets past discovery. That's why you fight them. They can never go past discovery.
Sean Willoughby:There's so much fear with this process and there's ignorance. Most of our leaders, our mayors, our city they have no idea. They've never dealt with this. They haven't spent a career analyzing the impact of DOJ. They don't know the truth. They have a bunch of people telling them to do something they simply don't know. So what happens in situations like what's going on in Phoenix? If they fight to a degree, they'll get a better deal and then they'll settle and the DOJ will still come in right. We're going to do this memo that gives us access and we're going to give you some analytics. We're going to help you and blah, blah, blah. And once you let that slithering snake into your agency, it's game over. You'll never get rid of them.
Travis Yates:Yeah, I mean obviously, personally, I want people to fight it, go all the way to Supreme Court and just get this thing thrown out all together. I think what would happen what will happen if the politicians stay strong is they'll file a federal lawsuit and before it gets to discovery though you're right They'll kind of meet in the middle. Well, nothing sort of DOJ doesn't have a say so in my department can be acceptable because, like you said, once they're there, they're there, and if you're right, you're right.
Sean Willoughby:They don't know the community that they're in. They have no idea.
Travis Yates:Does your monitor even live in Albuquerque? Does your?
Sean Willoughby:monitor. Live in Albuquerque.
Travis Yates:The monitor over your agency in the city? Do they live in Albuquerque? Oh, he was supposed to.
Sean Willoughby:He was supposed to live here and then he had a health issue that doesn't allow him to live here because of our elevation. So he maintains and pays for an office here that is not occupied by anybody, but he does not live here. He flies in and out and charges the taxpayers of Albuquerque every single time he opens his your taxpayers are paying for that rent.
Sean Willoughby:Oh yeah, this is the funny thing, Like when I when I say this, it's not. I'm going to give you an example. Right, I have an officer gets into a foot chase, no forces use. The guy gives up. Officer gets him Everybody's out of breath and get him back to the car. He's in the car and the detainee tells the officer man, I could really use some water. Man that run almost killed me. The officer's like yeah, me too, I'll get you some water.
Sean Willoughby:The sergeant shows up because he's required to analyze the video in real time to determine that force didn't get used and if it did get used, what type of force and what investigative detail needs to be dispatched to the same to ruin this cops day. And then he's watching the video, is talking to a sergeant. He's like there was no force. Here's my video. Do you mind if I take a bottle of water from your, from your cab, and give it to my detainee? He's thirsty, we just got into a foot chase. He's like, yeah, go ahead. So he goes to the back. He gives this gentleman with his bottle of water of the guys, Very nice. He says thank you, officer, I really appreciate it. He throws away the bottle of water and he goes back to a sergeant's car to see what he what he observed on the video and his serge says I'm so sorry, I'm going to have to send you to IA for that. And the officer says for what? He goes for making contact with your prisoner without your camera. That's an eight hour suspension in this agency Because the sergeant physically had the officer's camera and he gave the detainee water. That officer went to IA because he made contact a police contact without his camera.
Sean Willoughby:We have and that is a three month long investigation that touches probably two different departments in this. In this, in this police department, that is coupled with discipline. If you tackle an individual on a grass field for a felony, you have to separate like a criminal. Every officer on scene needs to separate and be housed in their car until an investigative unit comes and does a full blown investigation that lasts 90 days that are being done by civilians. Civilians are doing the investigation because they can't hire or get cops to do it and if they did, they don't have the resources to respond to calls for service for our citizens. They can't physically staff these entities. So we have CYFD employees and investigative civilians that are analyzing forced cases that police officers get involved in. I feel like I live in a crazy world. It's ridiculous. I'm sorry I went off on a tangent.
Travis Yates:So that's not a tangent. That is, people need to understand what this is and you know, if I'm listening, this is an outsider and hearing that story. Nobody in their right mind would go to a job that deals with that. Like if you were an accountant and you, every time you show up the accountants office, you had to do this paperwork and you got called a racist over here and you got scared of your boss and you. They would find no account. So it certainly sounds to me, with those kind of rules imposed, the intent is this to for the Albuquerque Police Department to not exist anymore. How will anybody ever want to come to work in the city of Albuquerque if they have to deal with that?
Sean Willoughby:Oh, they don't. They go somewhere else and most of there's two attributes, right, two attributes. So if you get into a situation where you violate the force policy, if you use, let's say, a beanbag on somebody that needed it in a situation but it wasn't it was perceived as passive resistance because the bad guy was just walking away. He wasn't trying to kill anybody. If that goes on your record, your police curse done. You're stuck in Albuquerque because there's not a single agency in this country that is going to hire an officer that has a violation of the force policy on their, on their criteria. So officers leave before that happens here. Officers don't even want to come in to the agency because they're not stupid and they have Google. They know exactly what's going on here and I mean our officers are terrified. They are absolutely miserable.
Sean Willoughby:When I started this job, I couldn't believe we got paid Like I had done it for free. I would have done it, I swear to God, I would have done it for free. There are times I didn't get paid and I didn't go home because somebody needed help. I loved being a police officer. Today that is not the case.
Sean Willoughby:You got dudes out of the academy that are sitting under a tree right now praying they don't have to get into a use of force today because they're so sick and tired of going to IA and taking time off and they really just need this job for two years so they can go to the FBI or go to some other agency as a lateral. It's, it's, it's a, it's a travesty, it's destroyed. My department, I'm proud of my badge, I'm proud of my city and I'm proud to be an Albuquerque police officer. But this has been such a letdown of you know, and if people knew, if the taxpayers of this community knew what this department is spending their money on, you know, investigating an open field tackle on a good, good job On a, on a, on a on a whole, on a beautiful grassy knoll for for six months, resulting in an officer getting time off. If they knew they'd be furious, but it's hard to tell that story.
Sean Willoughby:You know it's really hard to tell that story in a in a two second sound bite and people don't want that story told, right?
Travis Yates:Cause this, the idea that this is continuing to go on and deal. Jay has the arrogance to keep going into departments and the people that have the one accused you and I of oh, you don't believe in police getting better, you don't believe in police form. Well, the story we're aligning to you is is yes, we do. That's why we're speaking out about this. This makes things inherently worse. If you're worried about police shootings, those go up. If you're worried about violence, those go up. If you're worried about use of force, those go up because that tracks violence. As violence go up in the community, so do police use of force. I think most people understand that, but, um, it is just really insane. I mean, I would imagine you could tell these stories for days and people just wouldn't believe it.
Sean Willoughby:Oh no, they would not. They would have no comprehension, they'd have no belief in what's going on in Albuquerque. I mean, just read the use. You know, read the use of force policy.
Sean Willoughby:But I know that you dictate and you write several things on leadership and it cannot be overlooked, because leadership is what is lacking at the Albuquerque Police Department and it's done so by design, right when I was a young police officer, I cannot tell you how many times I was pulled into a sergeant's office and told like what are you thinking Right? Like this is not the way we do this, like we need to go back from the beginning. This needs to be done this way. This box, you know, whatever. It could be minimal, it could be big, but I was given on the job training by a leader who had the authority to lead Right and what I did was not misconduct.
Sean Willoughby:I wasn't intentionally violating the policy. What I did was I needed to be trained, I needed more guidance in certain areas and, as a young officer, my gosh, they all do this whole job is like a damn Rubik's Cube. So at the end of the day, that's gone, that right from our first line supervisors and our lieutenants are gone by policy. If there is a suspected policy violation in any attribute of their review, if they hear about it, they are required by policy to submit an investigative IAR is what we call them to internal affairs. So there's this huge gap of these rookie cops that leave OJT. They don't get any real guidance and if there's a violation of policy, even in the most innocent manner, it requires a submittal to internal affairs and a full blown investigation. Because if that Sergeant doesn't do that then his neck is on the line for failing to supervise.
Travis Yates:Yeah, anybody listening that is not familiar. I used to call this hallway conversations, right, where we used to be able to pull people in the hallway and say, hey, man, slow down, got to complain on your speed and where I saw you did. You know it's a training exercise. It's not, you know, it's just people learning to do the job and our supervisors and sergeants and lieutenants that's what we did routinely, right, and everybody knew that if you had a rookie cop, give them two or three years and it'll be just fine, but there's sort of a process to them learning the job, right. Well, when those hallway conversations leave your department's over, I don't care whether the DLJ is in town or not when the hallway conversation stops and everything goes to discipline, your department and city is over to DLJ. You know DLJ accelerates that, but I know a lot of agencies not under DLJ right now that that has stopped. Officers are scared to death either job because that's what's going on and that's when really bad things occur, right?
Sean Willoughby:I mean, what the public doesn't understand is that there's a lot of independent action in this career path, Right, if I'm a field service police officer working graveyard, right, I'm not bombarded with calls for service. I might have a whole hour or two hours in my 12 hour shift to do some proactive policing, pull some cars over for traffic violations, go mix it up in the community, but when we were kids, when we were rookies, we would, you know, I you see a guy walking down the street with a brand new TV at two o'clock in the morning in the box and, as a police officer, you think, hmm, this might be a clue, maybe we should talk to them. Yeah, not an Albuquerque, an Albuquerque we're going to be like. Sir, you need some help with that TV. Can I get you one of the carts from that are stolen from the Safeway? You have a wonderful day, sir. I hope that you do a good job.
Sean Willoughby:Independent police activity in this agency is dead and they've killed it because they've over, they've held officers to a standard that is unrealistic. It's an unrealistic expectation Police officers know it used to be. Remember that guy that sat under a tree. He never did any calls for service. He really didn't do any proactive activity. We didn't ever want to be that guy. When I was a young cop, we never wanted to be that guy. That's the only guy that succeeds today. That's it. That guy's not getting in trouble.
Travis Yates:Yeah, man, sean, sean Willoughby Incredible job. President of the Albuquerque Police Office Association. So few people are telling this story. Unfortunately, you're having to live it, but I'm very thankful that you're willing to tell it. You're trying to prevent it from continuing to happen because it is. It's a horrendous thing going on. It's the most cowardly fashion leadership I've seen, because, as leaders, you're saying I can't lead her department, we'll let the federal government lead the department. And these chiefs are going into these things. Smiling like this is a good thing when they're just showing just how weak they are and the ramifications, as you have outlined, are horrific. And so I can't thank you enough for being here, man. Hopefully what you have to say can help so many cities and agencies out there try to avoid what you've had to endure.
Sean Willoughby:I hope so. I mean I tell this story as to anybody that will listen, and I mean the voice being the voice of the police officers is responsibility. If you had a conversation with any of my officers, they would tell you that that I was 100% right on point with, with, with how they feel and what's going on in Albuquerque. And you know the chief don't worry about the chief, right, the chief works for somebody and the boss is the boss is the boss. So if the public doesn't want to deal with this type of intrusion with their community and their police departments and their personal safety of their families and friends and property, they need to be careful who they vote for. I mean, that's what it comes down to, because you know we have a great relationship with our chief. He does a lot for officers, he has an open door policy with us.
Sean Willoughby:Sorry, I don't agree with him on every single thing he does and we fight and argue like with the best of them. But I mean he still works for a mayor and he's told what to say and what to do and in this agency, this agency is compliant minded. That's all they care about. They don't care about calls for service, they don't care about the crime rate. They want to get out of. They want to get out out of this consent decree and they want to get to compliance.
Sean Willoughby:And that's what's fearful for Phoenix and anybody else that has to go through this. And I thank you for your platform and I thank you for your time and I thank you for letting me be a part of the conversation. You know there's nobody doing what you're doing, sir. You know it is a breakdown of our entire profession, because all of these professionals that are cops in this country they know that, they know damn well that what we're saying is the truth, but they just don't have the guts to formulate a plan and get this data out to the masses. And I appreciate you for what you're doing and thank you.
Travis Yates:Well, I appreciate that, sean, and it would certainly be easier if more people would speak up, and I'm sure you're facing the same thing. Most people are silent there in Albuquerque and you're very courageous to speak up. So thank you for what you've done for the profession and, if you've been listening, thank you for being here and just remember lead on yes, sir.
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