{"id":569292,"date":"2018-04-26T15:18:43","date_gmt":"2018-04-26T21:18:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=569292"},"modified":"2018-04-27T13:56:56","modified_gmt":"2018-04-27T19:56:56","slug":"good-police-work-or-racial-profiling-how-so-many-blacks-were-arrested-in-federal-sting-in-abq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2018\/04\/good-police-work-or-racial-profiling-how-so-many-blacks-were-arrested-in-federal-sting-in-abq\/","title":{"rendered":"Good police work or racial profiling? How so many blacks were arrested in federal sting in ABQ"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_569318\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 771px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-569318\" src=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/MMfeature-771x574-771x574.jpg\" alt=\"ATF\" width=\"771\" height=\"574\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/MMfeature-771x574.jpg 771w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/MMfeature-771x574-336x250.jpg 336w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/MMfeature-771x574-768x572.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 771px) 100vw, 771px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Courtesy photos<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Clockwise, ATF agents who participated in the 2016 Albuquerque operation; U.S. District Judge William P. Johnson; Federal Public Defender Brian Pori; and former Chief U.S. District Judge Christina Armijo.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>A debate over how so many black people came to be arrested in a 2016 gun- and drug-sting operation in Albuquerque is playing out in the city\u2019s federal courthouse.<\/p>\n<p>Following months of silence from the federal Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office, a narrative is beginning to emerge.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a story of good police work.<\/p>\n<p>According to this version, a pivotal moment happened a few days after the operation started in April 2016. Albuquerque Police Department detective\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmindepth.com\/2018\/04\/24\/apd-detective-led-federal-agents-to-memphis-mob\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Vic Hernandez handed ATF Special Agent Russell Johnson<\/a>\u00a0two sets of documents.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"module align-left half type-aside\">\n<h3>About this article<\/h3>\n<p>This article comes from\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmindepth.com\/2018\/04\/24\/good-police-work-or-racial-profiling-memphis-mob-and-how-so-many-blacks-were-arrested-in-atf-sting\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">New Mexico In Depth<\/a>. Sign up for\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmindepth.us6.list-manage.com\/subscribe?u=1d2ab093d81b992e50978b363&amp;id=9294743d38\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">their newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h3>Read more<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2018\/04\/apd-detective-led-federal-agents-to-memphis-mob\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">APD detective led federal agents to &#8216;Memphis Mob&#8217;<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2018\/04\/atf-agent-touted-stings-righteous-targets-in-email\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ATF agent touted sting&#8217;s &#8216;righteous targets&#8217; in email<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2018\/04\/legal-wrangling-could-pose-challenge-to-proving-racial-profiling-claims-against-atf\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Legal wrangling could pose challenge to proving racial profiling claims<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Johnson had arrived in the city the previous month, but his unfamiliarity with Albuquerque hadn\u2019t stopped the Mississippi-based agent from designing the sting. The operation employed five paid confidential informants \u2014 three black and two Hispanic \u2014 and would eventually nab 103 of what authorities called Albuquerque\u2019s \u201cworst of the worst,\u201d including percentages of blacks and Hispanics disproportionate to the city\u2019s population.<\/p>\n<p>The first document from Hernandez looked like a multi-page wanted poster with dozens of mugshots showing black men, their personal information and partial criminal histories. The phrase \u201cMemphis Mob,\u201d in bold, topped the document.<\/p>\n<p>It purported to show members of a \u201cdrug gang\u201d that APD had named the \u201cMemphis Mob\u201d in 2009 in advance of several arrests and stories in the local news media. Questions continue to linger about how much of a gang it really is.<\/p>\n<p>The other document listed 20-some names of current members of the \u201cMemphis Mob.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The exchange of documents \u2014 and Hernandez tipping Johnson off to the existence of the Memphis Mob \u2014 eventually led to the arrest of 14 black men, a Hispanic man and a Hispanic woman during the 2016 operation, according to Johnson\u2019s testimony.<\/p>\n<p>In all, 28 black people were arrested in the ATF operation. That\u2019s 27 percent of the total number of people arrested, in a city with only a 3 percent black population \u2014 and in a state where black people made up just 5 percent of gun and drug defendants in federal court from 2006 through 2015.<\/p>\n<p>How the ATF came to target so many black people has been a persistent question. For more than a year, criminal defense attorneys have raised it in court motions. And NMID raised the question following its\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmindepth.com\/2017\/05\/07\/feds-sting-ensnared-many-abq-blacks-not-worst-of-the-worst\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">comprehensive analysis of the operation<\/a>, including\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmindepth.com\/2017\/05\/15\/atf-used-traveling-well-paid-informants-in-abq-sting\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">how it was designed<\/a>, and a review of hundreds of federal court documents associated with those arrested.<\/p>\n<p>Prosecutors and Johnson say racial profiling didn\u2019t lead to the racial breakdown of defendants, as defense lawyers have insisted, but good police work did.<\/p>\n<p>Criminal defense attorneys aren\u2019t buying that narrative, however. They say the ATF\u2019s operation fit the mold of the agency\u2019s previous operations in other cities where it has been accused of racial profiling. And the \u201cMemphis Mob\u201d narrative, they say, is an after-the-fact story agents and prosecutors cooked up only after racial profiling allegations arose in late 2016.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor lack of better phrasing, judge, and this is not meant to be offensive, but Memphis Mob, Memphis Boys, it\u2019s kind of like what we hear in politics, dog-whistle politics,\u201d Assistant Federal Public Defender John Robbenhaar said during a court hearing in December. \u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s a phrase that gets everyone worked up. It\u2019s suggestive. \u2026 It goes to the discriminatory intent of the agents in their operation, and it\u2019s a post-hoc justification of the inordinately high number of African Americans in the class.\u201d<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Assistant U.S. Attorney David Walsh swatted away the assessment from Robbenhaar, who represents ATF sting defendant Lonnie Jackson, and another defense attorney, Aric Elsenheimer, who represents Diamond Coleman.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI just think that\u2019s very disingenuous and unfair, to accuse the government of coming up with the Memphis Mob notion to somehow prevail with respect to these motions that have been filed by the defense,\u201d Walsh said in December.<\/p>\n<p>Over the past year, at least two federal judges have found enough evidence to not summarily reject racial profiling claims filed by defendants\u2019 lawyers and have agreed that defense attorneys, over prosecutors\u2019 protests, should receive additional evidence to test their theories.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/nmindepth.com\/2018\/04\/24\/legal-wrangling-could-pose-challenge-to-proving-racial-profiling-claims\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">In a February ruling<\/a>, then-Chief U.S. District Judge Christina Armijo specifically cited testimony from Johnson and another ATF agent on how informants were selected in the Albuquerque operation when ordering prosecutors to turn over records. Defense attorneys say those records will help determine if \u201cdiscriminatory intent and discriminatory effect\u201d were at work in the Albuquerque operation.<\/p>\n<p>Federal prosecutors and ATF agents have refused numerous interview requests over the past year, leaving NMID and the public largely in the dark about how the operation netted so many minorities and how the operation was designed. The \u201cMemphis Mob\u201d surfaced in multiple court hearings that NMID attended over several months.<\/p>\n<p>NMID\u2019s review of the \u201cMemphis Mob\u2019s\u201d origin story and evidence in cases, including audio recordings from arraignments or detention hearings for 16 black defendants snapped up in the ATF operation, has produced more questions than answers.<\/p>\n<p>News of the operation, its design and its results\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmindepth.com\/2017\/06\/12\/black-community-wants-answers-on-atfs-albuquerque-sting-say-it-was-punch-in-the-face\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">roiled black people in Albuquerque<\/a>. Many who spoke with NMID last year said it harkened back to law enforcement tactics used against black communities in the 1960s and 1970s that are now roundly out of favor.<\/p>\n<p>Civil rights leaders in the city said the operation smacked of \u201cfailed War on Drugs\u201d policies that led to an explosion in the nation\u2019s prison population \u2014 disproportionately imprisoning black men.<\/p>\n<p>And ATF\u2019s work in Albuquerque took place against a backdrop of longstanding national complaints from minority communities about the way their neighborhoods are policed.<\/p>\n<h3>A gang is born?<\/h3>\n<p>\u201cMemphis Mob\u201d first entered the public and law enforcement lexicons in April 2009, when the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.abqjournal.com\/news\/metro\/0985859069newsmetro04-09-09.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Albuquerque Journal published a front-page story<\/a> about an APD-led operation. According to the newspaper, the investigation produced 35 arrests on gun and drug charges and was a potentially fatal blow to the gang.<\/p>\n<p>APD had invented the name of the gang, the newspaper reported, after police noticed a Memphis connection among suspects in numerous felony crimes, including some individuals who were allegedly shipping cocaine between Albuquerque and Tennessee.<\/p>\n<p>The 2009 list of alleged \u201cMemphis Mob\u201d members Hernandez, the APD detective, gave to Johnson at the start of the ATF operation in April 2016 is dated the day before the Journal published its story.<\/p>\n<p>Aside from a few stories about the convictions and sentencings for some purported \u201cMemphis Mob\u201d members, the so-called gang soon disappeared from public discourse.<\/p>\n<p>Lawyers representing defendants arrested in the ATF operation question whether the gang even exists \u2014 or whether it was created from whole cloth by APD and later seized upon by the ATF.<\/p>\n<p>Through his attorney, Cedric Laneham, one of the 2016 ATF defendants accused of gang membership, denied ever hearing the name \u201cMemphis Mob\u201d until it showed up in one of agent Johnson\u2019s reports. Laneham admitted past membership in the Gangster Disciples in Chicago.<\/p>\n<p>Two former APD detectives who worked on the investigation from 2007 through 2009, meanwhile, said department higher-ups inflated the \u201cMemphis Mob\u2019s\u201d significance in 2009.<\/p>\n<p>The former detectives spoke to NMID in return for not being named because they still have dealings with APD.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI remember doing some surveillance on some African American guys, and one of them might have been from Tennessee,\u201d one said during an interview. \u201cThey were moving some small quantities of dope, and one or two of them might have been involved in a homicide. But there was no big, interstate nexus, and I honestly don\u2019t remember hearing the term \u2018Memphis Mob\u2019 till it hit the papers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The other said he arrested one of the men on suspicion of a $200 cocaine sale, but was never told the man was a gang member until he saw the Journal article.<\/p>\n<p>The selling of small amounts of drugs would fit the profile of many of those swept up in the 2016 ATF operation. The vast majority of the ATF cases involved drug buys for less than $5,000, a NMID review found last year. Such small amounts are highly unusual for federal cases, seasoned defense lawyers say. Normally, amounts range from about $15,000 into the millions of dollars, they say.<\/p>\n<p>Johnson testified in court last year the only additional materials he reviewed when he was researching the gang were the Journal story and a KOAT-TV article about the 2009 takedown.<\/p>\n<p>Robbenhaar and Elsenheimer questioned Johnson about the Journal story, pointing him to its assertion that APD had made up the name \u201cMemphis Mob.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Johnson agreed with the plain language used in the story.<\/p>\n<p>Current APD spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said in an email in response to NMID last month that \u201cMemphis Mob\u201d gang members remain on the department\u2019s radar, although to a lesser degree than in the past because \u201cit\u2019s a small number relative to past activity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>APD uses the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/criminal-ocgs\/about-violent-gangs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">federal definition for street gangs<\/a>, \u201cwhich among other things, includes committing crimes for the betterment of the gang.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3>A developing concept?<\/h3>\n<p>Sixteen of the 28 black defendants arrested in the 2016 operation appeared in federal court for arraignments or detention hearings. There was not one mention of the \u201cMemphis Mob\u201d in those hearings by prosecutors or Johnson, an NMID review found. Johnson appeared to be in attendance at several of the hearings that were conducted soon after the defendants\u2019 arrests over a couple months.<\/p>\n<p>Robbenhaar and Elsenheimer have sought to admit the recordings as evidence in their clients\u2019 cases. Prosecutors say they are irrelevant.<\/p>\n<p>In a December court hearing, Robbenhaar asked why agents and prosecutors wouldn\u2019t have mentioned gang affiliations, given that dangerousness is among the factors a federal magistrate must consider at a detention hearing in determining whether to release a person.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was never an issue when these cases were brought,\u201d Robbenhaar told Judge Armijo. \u201cThis is now a central explanation, justification for the large number of African American defendants. It\u2019s a big issue for the government now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>David Walsh, the prosecutor, responded that \u201ca lot of our defendants have affiliations, but we don\u2019t bring it up at hearings.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For his part, Johnson testified in the same court hearing that he did not recall whether \u201cMemphis Mob\u201d came up at the detention or arraignment hearings he attended.<\/p>\n<p>There appears to have been no mention of the \u201cMemphis Mob\u201d or the takedown of several of its members at an\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.abqjournal.com\/825137\/104-charged-in-federal-firearm-and-drug-crackdown-in-bernalillo-county.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">August 2016 news conference announcing the operation\u2019s results<\/a>, which was attended by several law enforcement officials, including then-U.S. Attorney Damon Martinez.<\/p>\n<p>Nor was there a mention in an\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmindepth.com\/2018\/04\/24\/righteous-targets\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">email Johnson penned to colleagues<\/a>\u00a0days before that news conference directing them to a list of 24 \u201crighteous targets\u201d who had been ensnared by the sting.<\/p>\n<p>As cases from the ATF operation have continued to move through the courts, there have been no mentions of the \u201cMemphis Mob\u201d in scores of news releases from the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office, either, even though several cases involve individuals Johnson named as \u201cMemphis Mob\u201d members in court in December.<\/p>\n<p>Robbenhaar and Elsenheimer have pointed to another data point in their theory that the \u201cMemphis Mob\u201d connection is an after-the-fact justification.<\/p>\n<p>In mid-December 2016\u00a0\u2014 more than four months after the operation concluded \u2014Johnson amended one of the reports in the Cedric Laneham case to include a paragraph about Laneham\u2019s alleged links to the Memphis Mob, a connection that does not appear in earlier versions of the report.\u00a0Johnson also attached the Journal article to the report.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe date is key. December of 2016 is about the commencement, about the time the selective enforcement litigation started,\u201d Robbehnaar told Judge Armijo in December, using legal nomenclature for what is known in everyday language as racial profiling.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy letter to counsel requesting discovery was in January, early January, but we had certainly had discussions in the month of December,\u201d Robbenhaar told Armijo. \u201cI know other colleagues\u00a0of mine were also talking about getting discovery on selective enforcement. The issue was certainly made aware. (Prosecutors) knew of the issue.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Walsh, the prosecutor, denied that Johnson\u2019s amending of the report in Laneham\u2019s case was an attempt to create a post-operation justification for the number of blacks snapped up. He told the judge the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office had requested additional information from Johnson because prosecutors needed more evidence in the Laneham case.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt certainly wasn\u2019t the case where Special Agent Johnson was generating a report after the fact in order to concoct some type of Memphis Mob scenario,\u201d Walsh told Armijo. \u201cIt\u2019s nothing along those lines whatsoever. \u2026 We really deny it. There was no after-the-fact concoction vis-a-vis Memphis Mob.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It is now up to federal judges to determine whose narrative \u2014 the prosecutors or criminal defense attorneys \u2014 wins out. But it won\u2019t be Armijo, a President George W. Bush appointee who was the chief federal judge for New Mexico until February 2018, when she assumed senior judge status.<\/p>\n<p>U.S. District Judge William P. \u201cChip\u201d Johnson, another George W. Bush appointee, is now presiding over the cases against ATF defendants Jackson and Coleman. At a hearing earlier this month, Johnson signaled that he was more skeptical of the racial profiling claims than Armijo was.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A debate over how so many black people came to be arrested in a 2016 sting operation in Albuquerque is playing out in the city\u2019s federal courthouse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":569318,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[139,142,203,143,116],"class_list":["post-569292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-albuquerque","tag-crime","tag-law-enforcement","tag-race-and-ethnicity","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569292","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=569292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/569318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}