{"id":34408,"date":"2011-12-14T07:06:56","date_gmt":"2011-12-14T14:06:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=34408"},"modified":"2011-12-14T07:07:00","modified_gmt":"2011-12-14T14:07:00","slug":"police-board-ousts-ag-prosecutor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2011\/12\/police-board-ousts-ag-prosecutor\/","title":{"rendered":"Police board ousts AG prosecutor"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Attorney General Gary King (Photo by Heath Haussamen)<\/p><\/div>\n

The N.M. Law Enforcement Academy Board<\/a> has ousted a lawyer from Attorney General Gary King\u2019s<\/a> office who most board members said wasn\u2019t effectively doing the job of helping the board strip certification from officers accused of misconduct.<\/p>\n

From Capitol Report New Mexico<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the civilian members of the board \u2013 attorney\u00a0Nate Korn<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 delivered a blistering attack on the lawyer within\u00a0the AG\u2019s office in\u00a0charge of handling those misconduct cases. Speaking in front of the board,\u00a0Korn accused\u00a0Matt Jackson<\/a>\u00a0of \u2018inept prosecution,\u2019 asserting that Jackson \u2018has basically warehoused cases\u2019 while exhibiting \u2018an abysmal lack of preparation and an abysmal lack of understanding of the rules of evidence.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cIn one particular case reported by the\u00a0Albuquerque\u00a0Journal<\/a>,\u00a0John David Smoker was\u00a0fired from the Santa Fe Police Department\u00a0<\/a>in 2007 after a video surfaced showing\u00a0Smoker beating a handcuffed teenager but was later\u00a0hired by the Cuba Police Department and employed for years until retiring on a taxpayer-subsidized pension.<\/p>\n

\u201cKing defended Jackson, saying he had a \u2018clear record\u2019 of successfully bringing cases and accused Korn of making a personal attack.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018It sure seems like you\u2019re being a defensive employer rather than an active board member,\u2019 Korn responded.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to the Albuquerque Journal<\/a>, King, a member of the board, cast the sole vote against removing Jackson.<\/p>\n

The board also voted to delay action on more than 90 pending cases for 45 days so board members can review each one. From the Journal:<\/p>\n

\u201cAmong the cases on the list is one against a former APD officer who has \u2018been convicted of a federal crime and is still a licensed law enforcement officer in the state of New Mexico,\u2019 (Korn) said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Journal has learned the former officer is Brad Ahrensfield, who has been sentenced to six months in prison and six months\u2019 house arrest for obstruction of justice after he tipped off the target of a narcotics investigation in 2009.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

Violating open meetings law?<\/h3>\n

As the Las Cruces Sun-News reported<\/a>, King accused the other board members of \u201cperhaps colluding in violation of the New Mexico open-meetings law.\u201d<\/p>\n

From the Sun-News:<\/p>\n

\u201cKing at three different points said the other board members may have already talked and reached decisions in violation of the state open-meetings law.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018The appearance of this is something that strikes me as a little hinky,\u2019 King said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne board member, Robert Shilling, chief of the state police, looked at King and told him he had not violated any law calling for openness.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The N.M. Law Enforcement Academy Board has ousted a lawyer from Attorney General Gary King\u2019s office who most board members said wasn\u2019t effectively doing the job of helping the board strip certification from officers accused of misconduct.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[142,203],"class_list":["post-34408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-crime","tag-law-enforcement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34408\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}