Albuquerque, NM

The Albuquerque Police Department paid approximately $32 million in civil settlements between 2014 and 2024, a period that coincides almost exactly with the department's decade-long federal consent decree. The DOJ opened its investigation into APD in 2012 following a series of fatal shootings, ultimately documenting 37 officer-involved shootings between 2009 and 2012 - a rate that the DOJ found constituted a pattern of excessive force. The consent decree took effect in June 2015 and remained active until 2025.

Two cases define the APD settlement record. In July 2015, the city paid $5 million to the family of James Boyd, a homeless man with mental illness who was shot and killed by officers in March 2014 while camping in the Sandia Mountains. The shooting was captured on helmet camera footage that went viral, showing officers deploying a flash-bang grenade and releasing a police dog before shooting Boyd as he was gathering his belongings. Officers Keith Sandy and Dominique Perez were charged with second-degree murder - the first time APD officers faced murder charges - but were acquitted after two trials. In January 2018, the city paid an additional $5 million to the family of Mary Hawkes, a 19-year-old shot by Officer Jeremy Dear in April 2014. Dear was later fired for insubordination and untruthfulness.

The Boyd and Hawkes settlements together account for $10 million - 31.3% of total APD exposure - and involve four named officers. This concentration pattern is consistent with the PoliceRiskIndex national dataset: a small number of officers generating a disproportionate share of total liability. The remaining $22 million is distributed across hundreds of smaller cases involving traffic stops, excessive force, and civil rights violations documented in annual city litigation reports.

Albuquerque, like Louisville, transitioned from active consent decree status to a post-decree jurisdiction within the dataset's coverage window. The consent decree ended in 2025 after the DOJ determined APD had achieved substantial compliance with reform requirements. Whether settlement costs decline in the post-decree period is an open actuarial question - one that the PoliceRiskIndex dataset is positioned to track as 2025 and 2026 data becomes available.