Albuquerque City Council rejects resolution for independent investigation into police chief’s crash - KUNM News,KOB4,ABQ Journal
Albuquerque city councilors Monday night voted 5 -4 against a resolution calling for more outside agencies to investigate a car crash involving Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina.
KOB-TV reports tw0 weeks ago, Medina was on his way to a news conference with his wife in an unmarked APD car when he says he saw an encampment of people who were unhoused on a sidewalk and stopped. A court injunction last year mandated that the city not remove encampments on public property, but it allows the city to remove campers who are blocking rights of way. Medina says two men in the vicinity got into an argument and one pulled a gun and fired.
Medina in response ran a red light to avoid the gunfire and crashed into another car, seriously hurting the driver.
Medina admitted that he did not turn on his lapel camera and did not turn on his emergency lights when he drove through the intersection.
The Albuquerque Police Department said the Office of the Superintendent of Police Reform, which is an independent group under Internal Affairs, is currently conducting an investigation into the incident.
The Albuquerque Journal reports the resolution by Councilor Louie Sanchez called for the New Mexico State Police, Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office and the New Mexico Department of Justice to conduct a joint investigation into the crash. He and councilors Dan Lewis, Dan Champine, and Renee Grout voted in favor.
Texas activists pushed abortion restrictions in NM cities and counties, records show — By Austin Fisher, Source New Mexico
Abortion rights opponents in Texas dictated terms and pressured officials in New Mexico municipalities to pass ordinances restricting clinics, according to public records — potentially as part of a bigger legal strategy.
Emails show former Texas Solicitor General Jonathan Mitchell and Mark Lee Dickson, founder of the “Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn” initiative, succeeded in influencing local governments in rural parts of the state — despite warnings and hesitation from local officials.
In late 2022 and early 2023, the New Mexico cities of Clovis and Hobbs passed ordinances saying people have no right to violate the Comstock Act of 1873, a previously obscure federal statute that bans the mailing of abortion pills or abortion-related materials. They were later joined by Eunice and Edgewood, and Roosevelt and Lea Counties.
There are some variations among the six ordinances: Lea County’s ordinance specifies financial penalties for violations; the Roosevelt County and Edgewood ordinances allow a private citizen to sue and win monetary damages; and the Clovis, Hobbs and Eunice ordinances impose new licensing requirements on abortion clinics.
Emails obtained via public records requests show Mitchell and Dickson approaching local New Mexico governments to pitch versions of the ordinances.
A legal nonprofit called Democracy Forward brought the emails to light, and Source New Mexico independently verified the records through interviews with local officials and our own records requests.
The emails also show influence and control: Mitchell required any changes to the Clovis ordinance be approved by him, he was providing free legal advice to Eunice about amending the ordinance, and Dickson directed the language of the Hobbs ordinance.
Hobbs Mayor Ed Cobb said in a phone interview that it’s “not unusual for us to be provided information,” adding that the city has taken input from outside attorneys on other ordinances in the past.
“That doesn’t necessarily mean that we copy and paste it, but it’s not prohibited,” Cobb said.
The ordinances now face a challenge at the New Mexico Supreme Court, because they throw up regulatory roadblocks for abortion clinics by barring them from having drugs for medication abortions shipped from other states through the mail. And a 2023 statute gives the state — not local governments — the final say on reproductive health care.
New Mexico’s Democratic Attorney General Raúl Torrez is prosecuting the case against the local governments. He’s asking the justices to nullify the ordinances, and to go even further by setting legal precedent to ensure abortion rights under the New Mexico Constitution.
As of Monday morning, the justices had yet to issue a ruling.
Mitchell is banking on federal law superseding both state law and the New Mexico Constitution, according to a court filing in the case.
Mitchell told The Nation that regardless of how the New Mexico justices rule, the legal challenge will accelerate his goal of getting Comstock in front of the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court.
“That is the end game here,” said Joe Gaeta, director of oversight and engagement at Democracy Forward and one of the attorneys who originally obtained the records.
Comstock is key in the anti-abortion rights movement’s push for national restrictions, according to legal experts.
Democracy Forward tracks the far-right legal movement and has clashed with Mitchell in courts in Texas and other states. In 2023, the organization noted his efforts as part of “a city-by-city campaign to ban abortion.”
States Newsroom reports that since the decision overturning Roe v. Wade leaked in May 2022, anti-abortion rights activists have flooded state legislatures and city governments with proposals to criminalize pregnancy termination or to add burdensome regulations.
Neither Mitchell nor Dickson responded to multiple requests for comment submitted over weeks.
‘I SHOULD HAVE BEEN INVOLVED’
Before the ordinances were passed, Mitchell promised to represent Edgewood, Clovis, Hobbs and Eunice in court if they would adopt the measures, which could prevent abortion clinics from operating in their cities.
Some in these communities, including city and county officials, warned against getting involved in this fight over abortion at Mitchell and Dickson’s urging.
“Oh Mylanta. I hope your County Attorney is present to let them know they have no legal authority to do any of those things,” Quay County Clerk Ellen White wrote in an email to Roosevelt County on Sept. 19, 2022.
Reached via phone, White said, “I just didn’t really think it was the business of a county commission to deal with that.” She declined to comment further.
Two attorneys for Hobbs and one for Clovis, along with a Hobbs commissioner, also raised doubts about the ordinances’ legality, the records show.
Clovis does not have an in-house attorney but instead contracts with private lawyers. Jared Morris said he “generally” represents the city in “most of their matters” — but not the abortion ordinance.
Morris said in an interview that he had “zero involvement” in the ordinance.
“(Mitchell and Dixon) already had this ordinance, had it drafted, and their M.O. is to take it to these governing bodies — county or city commissions — and circumvent the in-house attorney, usually,” he said. “So that’s how it worked here.”
But the Clovis city charter requires the city attorney to prepare all ordinances.
“My interpretation is that I should have been involved in the drafting,” Morris said.
While Mitchell’s control over the ordinance’s language is strange, Morris acknowledged it doesn’t necessarily mean the ordinance itself is invalid.
For Gaeta with Democracy Forward, the most surprising revelation in the records was one Clovis official’s expression of feeling manipulated.
Morris said in an Oct. 13, 2022 email to the commissioners that Mitchell over in Texas had to approve any changes.
“Mayor was told last night that all changes to the ordinance, even the most minute, must be approved by Jonathan Mitchell to maintain our free defense,” he wrote.
Five days later, Clovis Commissioner Megan Palla raised concerns about Dickson and Mitchell’s motives in an email after noticing “extreme edits” between two different versions.
“I understand Jonathan Mitchell approved all edits, but why?” Palla wrote. “It makes me feel like there is something else up their sleeve and they don’t care what our ordinance says, they just want us to stick our neck out and pass something. Is there some other motive? I feel like a pawn in a game, but I don’t know the rules of the game and what the end result they are looking for.”
Palla did not respond to a request for comment.
And when a commissioner expressed a desire to add an exception to the ordinance for rape and incest survivors, Clovis Mayor Michael Morris — no relation to the attorney — wrote: “Please run it by Mitchell if you like. I support you.”
The Clovis mayor did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.
Mayor Cobb of Hobbs, on the other hand, said while Dickson did offer Mitchell’s free legal representation, the commission and the city’s legal team never entered into an attorney-client relationship with either of them.
“He offered to represent the city and has provided some information, but we’ve never had formal engagement with Mr. Mitchell,” Cobb said. “He did not come down here and tell us what to do. That’s the bottom line.”
Cobb said Mitchell commented on drafts, but the mayor never saw any draft directly from Mitchell, who “was never in any deliberations that I had with city staff.”
But the emails show Hobbs officials did defer to the Texas abortion rights opponents.
In an Oct. 2, 2022 email to Hobbs’ former city attorney, Mitchell wrote, “Attached is a revised Hobbs ordinance along the lines we discussed,” adding that Dickson “signed off on this version.”
Workplace safety regulator says management failed in fatal shooting by Alec Baldwin– By Morgan Lee, Associated Press
Complaints by a movie weapons supervisor to managers went unheeded as she sought more time and resources to fulfill safety duties on the set of the Western movie "Rust," where actor Alec Baldwin fatally shot a cinematographer, a workplace safety investigator testified Tuesday at the trial.
Defense attorneys for armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed called the inspector among its first witnesses to refute allegations of involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer Halyna Hutchins during a rehearsal in October 2021.
Lorenzo Montoya, of the New Mexico Occupational Health and Safety Bureau, conducted a six-month investigation of the shooting and whether managers affiliated with Rust Movie Productions complied with state workplace safety regulations.
His inspection produced a scathing narrative of safety failures in violation of standard industry protocols, including observations that weapons specialists were not allowed to make decisions about additional safety training and didn't respond to Gutierrez-Reed's complaints. The report also found that managers took limited or no action to address two misfires on set before the fatal shooting and requests to provide more training.
Defense attorneys argue the Gutierrez-Reed, who has pleaded not guilty, is being unfairly scapegoated for problems beyond her control on the set of "Rust," including Baldwin's handling of the weapons on the set of the Western movie in 2021.
Montoya said Gutierrez-Reed's requests for more resources as an armorer went unheeded.
"Rust Movie Productions identified a hazard," Montoya said. "They adopted firearms safety policies, but they totally failed to enforce them, train their employees on them, practice them, reference them. Nothing. They adopted it, and it stopped at the word adoption. Nothing further happened."
In a counterpoint to those findings, prosecutors previously introduced testimony from on-set producer Gabrielle Pickle that she responded to gun-safety concerns on the set of "Rust" by providing more days — 10 days, increased from five — for Gutierrez-Reed to devote to her armorer duties, instead of other responsibilities in the props department.
Prosecutors say Gutierrez-Reed is to blame for unwittingly bringing live ammunition on set and that she flouted basic safety protocols for weapons handling.
Dozens of witnesses have testified at a trial that began with jury selection on Feb. 21, including eyewitnesses to the shooting, FBI evidence analysts, an ammunition supplier to "Rust," and the film director who was wounded in the shooting and survived.
Baldwin, the lead actor and co-producer on "Rust," was separately indicted by a grand jury last month on an involuntary manslaughter charge in connection with the fatal shooting of Hutchins. He has pleaded not guilty, and his trial is scheduled for July.
Baldwin was pointing the gun at Hutchins during a rehearsal on the set outside of Santa Fe when the gun went off, killing her and wounding director Joel Souza.
Rust Movie Productions paid a $100,000 fine to resolve the state workplace safety findings.
A second charge against Gutierrez-Reed of evidence tampering stems from accusations that she handed a small bag of possible narcotics to another crew member after the shooting to avoid detection.
Mexican gray wolves boost their numbers, but a lack of genetic diversity remains a threat– By Susan Montoya Bryan, Associated Press
The wild population of Mexican gray wolves in the southwestern U.S. is still growing, but environmental groups are warning that inbreeding and the resulting genetic crisis within the endangered species will continue to be a threat to long-term survival.
The warning came Tuesday as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and wildlife agencies in Arizona and New Mexico announced the results of an annual survey, saying there were at least 257 wolves roaming parts of the two states. That's 15 more than the year before and the most reported in the wild since the reintroduction program began more than 25 years ago.
While it marks the eighth straight year the population has increased, environmentalists say the higher number is not necessarily a positive development. They contend that it means only that the genetic crisis among Mexican gray wolves will get harder to fix as the population grows.
"The agencies will claim this new benchmark shows a trajectory to success, but they aren't measuring the indicators of genetic diversity which must be addressed with improved policies around adult and family group releases," Greta Anderson, deputy director of Western Watersheds Project, said in a statement.
Environmental groups have been pushing for years to get the federal government to release more captive wolves into the wild and to revisit policies that have constrained the population within boundaries that they consider arbitrary. Right now, wolves that wander north of Interstate 40 in both states are captured and either taken back to the wolf recovery zone or placed into captivity, where they might be matched with potential mates.
Federal and state wildlife officials who have been working to restore Mexican wolves to the Southwest argue that genetic management using pups from captivity is showing results. Since 2016, nearly 99 captive-born pups have been placed into 40 wild dens as a way to broaden the genetic pool.
According to the survey, at least 15 fostered wolf pups have survived to breeding age over the past year, and at least 10 fostered wolves have successfully bred and produced litters in the wild.
"Having fostered Mexican wolves survive, disperse, pair up, breed and start packs of their own tells us that fostering is working," Brady McGee, the Mexican wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said in a statement.
Michael Robinson, a senior conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, said most of the pups that have been placed into wild dens have disappeared over the years and at least a dozen have turned up dead. While the captive population retains some genetic diversity, he said every Mexican gray wolf in the wild is almost as closely related to the next as siblings are.
Robinson said that artificial feeding of wild wolves by the Fish and Wildlife Service has increased the animals' fertility and pup survival rates without solving the underlying inbreeding. Wildlife managers sometimes use supplemental food caches for the first six months for packs that include fostered pups.
He and others renewed their push Tuesday for releasing more captive wolf families, saying success would be higher.
Ranchers and other rural residents have resisted more releases, saying their livelihoods have been compromised by the ongoing killing of livestock by the wolves.
While compensation funds help alleviate some of the financial hardship that comes from their cattle being killed or the cost of materials and labor for setting up deterrents, they say it's often not enough and that federal standards adopted last year for determining whether livestock was killed by wolves will make getting compensation more difficult.
New Mexico lawmakers included $1.5 million in their budget proposal to help existing compensation efforts over a two-year period, starting next year. Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has until Wednesday to sign the budget and other legislation passed during the just-concluded 30-day session.
Commercial air tours over New Mexico's Bandelier National Monument will soon be prohibited– Associated Press
Commercial air tours over New Mexico's Bandelier National Monument and within a half-mile outside its park boundary will soon be prohibited, officials said Tuesday.
The National Park Service and Federal Aviation Administration finalized an air tour management plan for the 50-square-mile (130-kilometer) monument near Los Alamos.
The plan will go into effect within 180 days.
Park officials said the move was made to protect natural and cultural resources, sacred tribal places and wilderness.
The monument is said to have one of the largest concentrations of Ancestral Pueblo archaeological sites in the Southwest.
"Prohibiting commercial air tours protects the cultural and spiritual significance of these lands to tribes and ensures the park experience desired by visitors," Park Superintendent Patrick Suddath said in a statement.
Bandelier was designated as a national monument in 1916 by then-President Woodrow Wilson. It was named for Swiss-American anthropologist Adolph Bandelier.
Ammo supplier says he provided no live rounds in fatal shooting of cinematographer by Alec Baldwin — Morgan Lee, Associated Press
An ammunition supplier testified at trial Monday that he only provided inert dummy rounds to the Western film "Rust" where actor Alec Baldwin fatally shot a cinematographer in 2021, though he also was handling live rounds from another production at that time.
Albuquerque-based movie firearms and ammunition supplier Seth Kenney took the stand at the trial of "Rust" movie armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who is charged with involuntary manslaughter and evidence tampering in the death of cinematagropher Halyna Hutchins.
Kenney told a jury he cleaned and repackaged ammunition to "Rust" that was previously supplied to a production in Texas, handing off a box of 50 inert dummy rounds containing no gunpower to the "Rust" props supervisor on Oct. 12, 2021.
Kenney also said he scrubbed the exterior of the rounds and cleaned out residue inside in each of them to ensure the telltale rattle of a metal pellet inside dummy rounds could be heard for safety purposes.
The outcome of trial may hinge on testimony about the source of six live rounds discovered on the "Rust" set — including the one from Baldwin's gun. Live ammunition is expressly prohibited on movie sets by the industry and union guidelines.
Prosecutors say Gutierrez-Reed is to blame for unwittingly bringing live ammunition on set and that she flouted basic safety protocols for weapons handling. She has pleaded not guilty.
Defense attorneys say their client is being smeared and unfairly scapegoated for problems beyond her control, including Baldwin's handling of the weapons. On Monday, they highlighted images of Kenney's "cluttered" business, a storage system without written inventories, and Kenney's "hazy" recollection of his timeline for receiving live rounds for another production.
Baldwin, the lead actor and co-producer on "Rust," was separately indicted by a grand jury last month on an involuntary manslaughter charge in connection with the fatal shooting of Hutchins. He has pleaded not guilty, and his trial is scheduled for July.
Baldwin was pointing the gun at Hutchins during a rehearsal on the set outside of Santa Fe when the gun went off, killing her and wounding director Joel Souza.
In Monday's testimony, Kenney said he provided "Rust" props master Sarah Zachry, who also managed weapons and ammunition for the production, with dummy ammunition retrieved from a props storage truck on the Texas set of the television series "1883."
"Did you ever give any live ammunition to Sarah Zachry?" prosecutor Kari Morrissey asked Kenney. He responded, "No."
Responding to additional questions, Kenney said Monday that didn't have any ammunition that looked like the live rounds investigators found on the set of "Rust."
At the same time, Kenney acknowledged he stored live rounds that were used in a live-ammunition shooting exercise for actors on "1883," arranged at a private ranch of series creator Taylor Sheridan.
Kenney said the live rounds from that shooting exercise were brought back to his shop, stored in a bathroom within a gray plastic container marked "live rounds" on the outside.
The live rounds were initially provided to "1883" by Gutierrez-Reed's step-father, the Hollywood sharp shooter and weapons consultant Thell Reed.
Investigators from the Santa Fe sheriff's office searched Kenney's Albuquerque supply shop several weeks after the fatal shooting, seizing live rounds that were sent to the FBI for analysis and comparison with live rounds discovered on the set of "Rust."
Defense attorney Jason Bowles has argued that Kenney wasn't properly investigated for his role as a "Rust" supplier. Bowles on Monday highlighted the fact that the search of Kenney's business took place about a month after the fatal shooting.
Kenney's testimony also delved into his disagreements with Gutierrez-Reed about her job performance on the set of "Rust" in connection with a gun misfire — prior to the fatal shooting.
Testimony Monday also delved into evidence related to a tampering charge against Gutierrez-Reed. That charge stems from accusations that she handed a small bag of possible narcotics to another crew member after the shooting to avoid detection.
A crew member from food services testified that she went to Gutierrez-Reed's hotel room the evening after the fatal shooting to keep the armorer company at the request of a union steward. She said Gutierrez-Reed handed her some white powder in a plastic baggie within another baggie, and that she felt insulted and threw it into a hallway garbage container after leaving the room.
"In fairness, you probably had five seconds to look at this bag, is that right?" said Bowles, the defense attorney. "You have a belief, but you don't know for certain, what was in that bag."