Sheriff takes over case involving Las Cruces city manager

DA says Las Cruces police had a conflict because Terrence Moore is the police chief’s boss; LCPD disputes that but hands over case ‘to remove this potential of perceived cloud of impropriety’

The Doña Ana County Sheriff’s Department is taking over a Las Cruces Police Department investigation into two incidents involving City Manager Terrence Moore and his ex-wife.

The case transfer took place Friday afternoon after Doña Ana County District Attorney Susana Martinez raised concerns about the way LCPD handled the case and urged the transfer to the sheriff’s department. It also followed weeks of inquiries from this reporter that included reviews of police documents and audio recordings.

Last year, Las Cruces police looked into injuries Moore’s then-wife suffered in late 2008 and questions surrounding a police report the city manager filed over a prescription-drug incident in January 2009, treating the two incidents as a single case. Las Cruces police closed the case without filing charges.

Martinez said LCPD should not have been investigating a case involving its own boss and should have turned the case over to an outside agency at the start. Moore oversees the police chief and, by extension, the police department.

“This sort of an investigation should have been conflicted out (from the beginning). It should have been transferred to another law enforcement agency so there wasn’t even the appearance of impropriety,” Martinez said in an interview.

Martinez’s urging of the transfer came after she reviewed police reports and talked with Interim LCPD Chief Pete Bradley. She said the investigation was not thorough, which, given Moore’s position over the police department, creates an appearance of impropriety.

Among her concerns: Police interviewed Moore’s then-wife but, though there was reason to suspect that she might have been the victim of domestic violence, they didn’t interview Moore.

Moore: ‘I haven’t even been accused of anything’

Bradley told this reporter Friday that he believed LCPD handled the situation appropriately. He said he was going to have a certified domestic violence instructor who works for LCPD review the case to make sure nothing was missed and would contact the district attorney for a possible transfer if the instructor found something.

Less than three hours after making that statement, Bradley handed the case over to Sheriff Todd Garrison.

Bradley said Sunday he changed his mind “to remove this potential of perceived cloud of impropriety.” He still maintains that LCPD handled the case appropriately and that there was no impropriety. He said he doesn’t expect the sheriff to find anything LCPD did not.

“Nothing changed about my belief of what occurred or anything else, it’s just there’s so much interest in this, and so many fingers pointing out impropriety and conflict of interest,” he said.

Bradley wasn’t chief at the time of the investigation. He was a deputy chief, and he took over as interim chief when Harry Romero retired from the top job at LCPD on Nov. 31. Romero could not be reached for comment for this article.

Contacted Saturday, Moore said that no one has alleged “that I’ve done anything wrong.”

“I haven’t even been accused of anything,” Moore said. “So how could this even be an issue?… I haven’t done anything. There’s nothing there. There never was, to begin with.”

He declined to comment further.

Moore’s then-wife did not allege a crime

Last year, Las Cruces police looked into two incidents: injuries Moore’s then-wife suffered in late 2008, and a police report Mr. Moore filed over a prescription-drug incident in January 2009.

Moore’s ex-wife has not alleged that Moore or anyone else committed crimes against her. But injuries to her head, and the police report Moore filed, caught the attention of LCPD Officer Maurice Hernandez in March 2009.

Hernandez is stationed at the school at which Moore’s ex-wife teaches, and on March 5, 2009 – a day after Moore filed for divorce – his then-wife approached Hernandez at the school. According to the police report Hernandez filed that day, Mrs. Moore told Hernandez that Mr. Moore had “pushed” his way into the house, having come to “pick up some of his things,” and refused to leave until she threatened to call police.

The report also states that Moore’s then-wife expressed concern about Moore getting “nasty” with her at their son’s soccer practice and taking her copy of their will when he moved out of the house.

Hernandez filed a second report on March 6 in which she states that Moore’s then-wife “apologized for getting me involved and said that she didn’t want to cause me any trouble.”

“She then went on to tell me that her husband, Mr. Moore had called and left some messages and had named me by name stating that I’d been told by my bosses that the situation was being handled, or something like that,” Hernandez wrote in her report.

Neither Hernandez nor Moore’s ex-wife would comment for this report.

Bradley confirmed that, over the course of the next several days, Hernandez had some off-the-record conversations with Mrs. Moore, whose divorce from Mr. Moore was finalized on Nov. 30 of last year. On March 12, Hernandez conducted a formal interview with Moore’s then-wife at the school.

Hernandez questioned Mrs. Moore at length about two incidents, according to an audio recording of that interview that was obtained by this reporter in response to a public records request.

Head injuries required three stitches

In late 2008, Mrs. Moore sustained a black eye and a cut on the back of her head. She was examined by a neighbor – a retired physician who told her she needed to go to the hospital, she told Hernandez during the interview.

The cut required three stitches, Mrs. Moore told Hernandez. She refused to tell Hernandez how she sustained the injuries, according to the recording of the interview.

“But it did get physical?” Hernandez asked.

“I didn’t say that,” Mrs. Moore answered.

Mrs. Moore also explained to Hernandez why she wouldn’t tell her certain things, including what caused the injuries.

“I’m trying to keep most of it as quiet as possible. … I’m thinking about my future now… because I’m worried about his ability to pay child support, and my alimony,” she said to Hernandez during the interview.

She did tell Hernandez that, when she sustained the injuries, Mr. Moore “wanted the paperwork to say I fainted. That was so important to him.”

She didn’t say during the interview whether she actually did faint.

Mr. Moore declined to answer, or even be asked, specific questions about his ex-wife’s statements made during the recorded interview with Hernandez, or about other aspects of the police probe.

Moore, ex-wife told different stories about prescription situation

In January 2009, Mr. Moore filed a report with LCPD about an incident involving a prescription drug for his wife that was picked up from Walgreens Pharmacy. He claimed, according to the report, that his wife picked up her prescription, realized it was the wrong medication, returned it to Walgreens and got the right prescription.

“It did not appear to Mr. Moore or his wife that anything amiss occurred that this was just an error,” the report states.

But that’s not what Mrs. Moore said happened when asked about the situation during the March 12 interview with Hernandez.

She told Hernandez that Mr. Moore picked up the prescription from Walgreens and brought it home to her. When she opened the bag, she told Hernandez, she found unmarked pills that didn’t look like her normal medication in a bottle that had Wite-Out over the description of the pills inside it.

In addition, the part of the bottle’s label that described the pills “was torn off,” Moore’s then-wife told Hernandez during the interview.

Mrs. Moore and Hernandez discussed whether Mr. Moore, or someone else such as a pharmacy employee, might have tampered with the prescription medication. Mrs. Moore told Hernandez she didn’t want to think about the possibility of Moore being involved.

“Not like he would try to kill me. Come on, let’s – I’m too, I’m young, I’m healthy, they’d have to do an autopsy. Come on,” Mrs. Moore said after Hernandez told her she was glad she didn’t take any of the pills.

“And maybe we’re just thinking too far into it,” Hernandez replied.

Chief says police didn’t have probable cause

Chief Bradley defends his department’s decision to close the case.

Moore’s then-wife “bumps right up to the edge” of alleging crimes in her conversations with Hernandez, but didn’t go far enough to trigger further police action, Bradley said during his interview with this reporter.

“OK, do we have any indication that there was an intentional act to poison anybody or anything else? No we do not. Do we have any supporting documentation or evidence that says one is telling the truth over the other? No we do not,” Bradley said. “… Now if we have one person step up to say, ‘I think he intentionally tried to poison me,’ boom, I mean, flags go off and everything else occurs.”

There’s no indication that police did anything further to investigate after Hernandez’s March 12 interview with Moore’s then-wife.

This reporter obtained police reports, and related audio recordings, through a records request. They were public because the case had been closed, and police said that was all there was to the case file.

There’s nothing in the police file to indicate that the case was ever assigned to a detective. There’s nothing to suggest that police looked for evidence of whether Moore or his wife picked up the prescription at Walgreens, such as a receipt or security camera video; the case file does not contain either. It also appears that police did not interview the neighbor who examined Mrs. Moore the night she suffered her injuries in 2008.

And there’s nothing in the file to indicate that police ever interviewed or attempted to interview Mr. Moore about either incident.

Police flagged report and kept some details from the public

There’s also evidence that police treated the report Mr. Moore filed related to the prescription drugs as a sensitive matter.

Hernandez, while telling Moore’s then-wife during the March 12 interview how she could obtain a copy of the report Moore filed, said police were “handling this like it’s just an, everybody off the street, anybody off the street, not a special person, not no special privileges or anything like that.”

“You might have to go through some little red tape because, because, like I said, it is a secured report,” Hernandez said.

A secured report is one that has been flagged by someone at LCPD as sensitive for some reason, LCPD spokesman Dan Trujillo told this reporter. When that happens, the section of the report containing a narrative of the incident is not available to the public, he said.

Reasons to secure a report could include that the incident involves juveniles, Trujillo said. That was not the case with this report, but in this reporter’s experience, it’s not unusual for LCPD to flag reports involving public officials.

“Why would it be secured if they’re treating it like anyone off the street?” Mrs. Moore asked Hernandez during the March 12 interview about the report Mr. Moore filed.

“I don’t, I don’t ask those questions because I’m not going to get those answers, so I just don’t ask,” Hernandez replied. “Some things are better left unsaid.”

Reached by phone by this reporter, Hernandez said she could not talk about the situation because doing so would probably violate LCPD policy.

Moore’s ex-wife did not respond to phone messages seeking comment. And when this reporter sent a message to a Facebook account that appears to belong to her, Mr. Moore called to say his ex-wife contacted him about the message, and that she didn’t want to talk. Again, Mr. Moore refused to answer specific questions.

Martinez questions thoroughness of police inquiry

Martinez said the “standard method of investigating” a possible domestic violence incident includes “all possible suspects being interviewed, and all possible victims being interviewed.” Police should have interviewed Mr. Moore about the injuries Mrs. Moore suffered, she said.

“All possibly involved individuals are interviewed because it is necessary to make sure you are getting the whole story and the truth,” Martinez said.

Bradley said there wasn’t probable cause to justify interviewing Moore about either incident. And there was no attempt to obtain evidence from Walgreens because police can’t access pharmacy records “without probable cause that a crime has been committed,” he said.

Bradley said the department closed the case because no one, including Moore’s then-wife, was alleging that a crime had occurred, and police had no other evidence to prove a crime.

“It would be safe to say that we suspected something occurred, that we were not getting the whole story, that we were unable to get the whole story,” Bradley said.

But suspecting that something occurred, Bradley said, isn’t the same as suspecting that a crime had been committed.

“We didn’t suspect a crime occurred. We wanted to make sure a crime hadn’t occurred,” he said. “… it’s a subtle difference.”

Bradley said LCPD went beyond what it normally would have done in such a case – through attempts to build a relationship with Moore’s then-wife and get her to open up – “for the simple reason that it would appear to be improper had we not.”

‘Because her husband is the boss of the police department’

Martinez said interaction between Bradley and this reporter illustrates why the Las Cruces police should have turned over the case to an outside agency from the start.

Over the course of seven weeks, Bradley rejected, through the police spokesman, two requests from this reporter for an interview, and he did not return a message left with the police administration receptionist. It was only on Friday, when Mr. Moore called him and asked him to talk with this reporter, that Bradley agreed to an interview.

Martinez said the fact that Moore was able to change Bradley’s mind reinforces her point about Moore’s influence over LCPD.

“When there is an appearance of impropriety doesn’t necessarily mean there is impropriety,” Martinez said. “The concern is if the victim – if there is a victim – believes he has some kind of authority over the investigating agency and that makes her feel intimidated. The conflict of interest is where she does not feel comfortable giving information – if there’s information to give – because her husband is the boss of the police department.”

“Certainly, that was something she said she was concerned about when speaking to the LCPD officer,” Martinez said about Moore’s then-wife.

Bradley said the LCPD investigation never reached the point at which police would have considered whether a conflict of interest existed.

“Had there been any indication of criminal activity, allegations of criminal activity, we would have made the decision whether or not to handle it ourselves or farm it out,” Bradley said.

Bradley also said he has “no knowledge of any pressure” being applied by Moore in an attempt to steer the investigation.

“I saw absolutely no indication,” Bradley said.

“And I can tell you, up front, that if there would have been an arrest to be made, my former boss would have been waving the handcuffs,” Bradley said of Romero.

‘Get it dealt with as quickly as possible’

Sheriff Garrison expressed no opinion on whether LCPD should have given the case to the sheriff’s department or another agency in the first place, but said he’s happy to honor Bradley’s request to investigate.

He said the department will utilize what LCPD has already done and do its own investigation beyond that.

“The intent is to get it dealt with as quickly as possible,” he said.