Colleen Heild

1 week ago | yahoo.com | Colleen Heild

Apr. 13—At the age of 21, Jaden Brown found himself in the home office of a lawyer he didn't know, with a legal assistant pressuring him to pay $10,000 to ensure his DWI case was thrown out. "You can pretend this never happened," Brown recalled the assistant, Ricardo "Rick" Mendez, telling him back in April 2022. It was days after Albuquerque Police Department DWI officer Joshua Montaño arrested him and told him a lawyer would contact him.

1 week ago | abqjournal.com | Colleen Heild |Matthew Reisen

At the age of 21, Jaden Brown found himself in the home office of a lawyer he didn’t know, with a legal assistant pressuring him to pay $10,000 to ensure his DWI case was thrown out. “You can pretend this never happened,” Brown recalled the assistant, Ricardo “Rick” Mendez, telling him back in April 2022. It was days after Albuquerque Police Department DWI officer Joshua Montaño arrested him and told him a lawyer would contact him. kAm$@ H96? |6?56K 42==65[ qC@H?

1 week ago | abqjournal.com | Matthew Reisen |Colleen Heild

In June 2022, acting Commander of Internal Affairs Mark Landavazo — who started in the DWI Unit before rising to the upper echelons of the Albuquerque Police Department — was forwarded a civilian complaint from the FBI. The allegations, if true, were damning, explosive and specific. Recently obtained APD records state that Landavazo “had seemingly not done anything” with the complaint, which gave an account from a 21-year-old college student arrested by Montaño.

2 weeks ago | abqjournal.com | Colleen Heild

Albuquerque attorney Rudolph Chavez opted to forgo a public hearing Monday on allegations by a state disciplinary board that alleged his involvement in the DWI bribery and extortion conspiracy under investigation by federal authorities. Instead, Chavez accepted an indefinite suspension of his license to practice law, representing the second lawyer linked to the scheme to face disciplinary action by the state Supreme Court.

2 weeks ago | yahoo.com | Colleen Heild

Apr. 5—The city of Albuquerque's independent watchdog agency has issued an unusual public notice aimed at its citizen oversight committee, which has yet to make public nine finished internal investigations into alleged misconduct at City Hall. In an "Update to Citizens of Albuquerque" released Monday, city Inspector General Melissa R. Santistevan wrote that the pending reports "deal with fraud, waste, or abuse that impact our City.