Charges pursued in N.M. shooting
Schizophrenic homeless man killed in police confrontation
A New Mexico prosecutor on Monday said she is pursuing murder charges against two Albuquerque police officers involved in the shooting death of a homeless camper last year, a process she vowed would be more transparent than the grand juries that were convened but failed to indict officers in Missouri and New York.
Her decision comes at a time of intense scrutiny of police tactics after last summer’s fatal shooting of an unarmed black man in Ferguson, Missouri, and the chokehold death of another unarmed black man on New York’s Staten Island, both of which led to confrontational weekslong protests. Grand juries in both cases declined to charge the white officers involved.
“Unlike Ferguson and unlike in New York City, some recent high profile cases, we’re going to know,” Bernalillo County District Attorney Kari Brandenburg said at a news conference. “The public’s going to have that information, you all will have seen the witnesses, heard the argument and you’ll understand hopefully perhaps why the judge made the decision that he or she made.”
The Albuquerque Police Department has come under fire for a string of fatal confrontations and was investigated by the U.S. Justice Department, which in April said it had found a pattern of excessive force used by Albuquerque officers.
Brandenburg filed documents in court proposing an open charge of murder against Officer Dominique Perez and former Detective Keith Sandy, who was allowed to retire from the department eight months after the shooting. An open charge of murder means that a range of counts could be considered – from no charges or minor charges to first-degree murder.
The case centers on James “Abba” Boyd, a 38-year-old homeless man who had been camping illegally in the Sandia Foothills and whose shooting death on March 16 was captured by an officer’s helmet-mounted camera. Boyd suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and the video shows him acting erratically and brandishing two small knives multiple times during what came to be a four-hour standoff.