County, state law enforcement sued over shooting - Roswell Daily Record
The sister of an unarmed man fatally shot by Chaves County Sheriff’s deputies in June 2021 has filed separate lawsuits against the Chaves County Board of Commissioners and the New Mexico Law Enforcement Board and its former director.
Represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico and an Albuquerque law firm, Emeli Najera, a personal representative for her brother’s estate, is alleging battery and negligence in her lawsuit against the county commissioners, filed Wednesday in the Chaves County division of the New Mexico 5th Judicial District Court.
A lawsuit filed the same day in Santa Fe with the 1st Judicial Court against the New Mexico Law Enforcement Academy Board and Kelly Azaharna alleges violations of the state Tort Claims Act. Azaharna left the Academy in late March.
Najera is asking for monetary damages and any other relief deemed appropriate by the court.
The lawsuits also criticize Sheriff Mike Herrington, his employees and the Law Enforcement Academy Board.
“CCSO has instituted a practice of hiring officers with problematic and dangerous histories from other local police departments, often while they have pending referrals to the LEA. The LEA in turn refuses to police the police, allowing these officers to continue working in our communities. The LEA’s failures have helped propel New Mexico to the second-highest fatal police shooting rate in the United States,” wrote Laura Schauer Ives of the law firm of Ives & Flores P.A. in a press release announcing the filing of the suits.
Ives and attorneys with the ACLU also note that their lawsuits come on the heels of a more recent officer-involved shooting in Chaves County. In that March 27 incident, one or more deputies fatally shot David Aguilera, 34, described as a “disorderly subject,” near a dairy on Jackson Road in south Chaves County after he was tased several times. The Roswell Police Department is leading an investigation into that situation, with the New Mexico State Police and Sheriff’s Office personnel also involved.
Stanton Riggs, the lawyer for Chaves County, chose not to comment about the Najera lawsuit, and an email to Herrington was not returned by press time.
“At this point we don’t really have any comment,” said Riggs. “We haven’t been served with it, so we haven’t seen it.”
H.L. Lovato, a spokesman with the Office of the Secretary for the New Mexico Department of Public Safety, said “We take seriously any allegations. We believe it is inappropriate to comment on the merits of the lawsuit because this is a pending legal matter.”
He also said the Department of Public Safety is, “entrusted, by policy and ethical commitment, to ensure all New Mexico law enforcement officers receive and are given credit for their training” and that law enforcement officers can be suspended if they do not meet requirements, which law enforcement chiefs and sheriffs are required to verify.
Lawyers: Shooting ‘culmination of failures’
Oscar Najera III was shot by Deputies Ricardo Delgado and Raul Ramos on June 27, 2021, at the age of 25.
The deputies remain employed as law enforcement officers, but, in line with Sheriff’s Office policy, were placed on three days of paid administrative leave immediately following the shooting.
On the day of the shooting, Najera’s girlfriend had called 911 to report a domestic dispute, saying that Najera had threatened her with her own gun.
While the woman was told that the Roswell Police Department would handle her complaint, Sheriff’s deputies searched for Najera.
They found the car Najera was driving at a convenience store. What they didn’t notice, according to the lawsuit, was the gun “in plain sight” on the floorboard. Then deputies saw Najera running through a park near Evergreen Street in Roswell. One deputy tried to hit him with a taser, but missed. None of the deputies’ radio communications mention seeing a weapon on Najera, the lawsuit states.
Delgado and Ramos then encountered Najera in a front yard on Evergreen Street. Within 10 seconds, they had fired eight shots, with seven striking Najera.
“All bullets entered from left to right or back to front,” the lawsuit says, “indicating Oscar was facing away from Delgado and Ramos when he was shot.”
According to the lawsuit, Najera had survived an earlier shooting to the face in 2016 at the age of 20 that had left him with post-traumatic stress disorder, which he was being treated for, and “symptoms of a brain injury up until the time of his death.”
In making the battery claim against the county, the lawsuit states the deputies acted unreasonably toward a man who made no physical or verbal threats toward them, had no weapon and was surrendering. “The shooting was not reasonably necessary in the enforcement of law and the preservation of order,” it states.
While the New Mexico State Police investigated the shooting, the lawsuit states that the plaintiff has reason to doubt the independence of that inquiry.
Suit alleges negligent training, oversight
For the negligence claim, the lawsuit alleges that the Sheriff’s Office, and therefore the county, is negligent in its hiring practices, its training and its enforcement of policies and laws. It also claims that the Sheriff’s Office “negligently adopts and ratifies a policy and practice of excessive force.”
Part of its support for those claims are the allegations that many of the sheriff’s law enforcement officers, including Delgado and Ramos, lack the firearms training and certification required by law, as well as training for dealing with people with mental health or behavioral issues.
Delgado, in particular, comes under scrutiny because, the lawsuit states, he was accused of excessive force when he served with the Roswell Police Department before joining the Sheriff’s Office.
The Roswell Police Department referred the matter to the New Mexico Law Enforcement Academy Board in June 2020, according to the lawsuit and as confirmed by the Department of Public Safety. The allegations in the suit against LEA, however, include that the state agency contributed to Najera’s death. The lawsuit alleges “failures” to ensure compliance with state law about officers’ instruction, training and certification requirements, to oversee local training efforts, to deal properly and expeditiously with complaints, and to revoke law enforcement officers’ certifications when warranted.
The lawsuit makes three specific complaints against LEA: negligence resulting in battery, deprivation of rights resulting in wrongful death and negligent operation of a building. The last count, according to Ives, is the allegation that the LEA failed to ensure that the Chaves County Sheriff’s Office operated its premises properly, which led to the “dangerous” conditions on the site where Najera died.
Although the Sheriff’s Office did not respond to a request for comment by press time, Herrington told the Daily Record in August that deputies on the day of the shooting believed their lives might be in danger, had been told that Najera could have a gun and were seeing things differently on the scene than might be viewed by people watching video from the lapel camera of one of the deputies, which has been shown on television and online.
Lisa Dunlap can be reached at 575-622-7710, ext. 351, or at [email protected].
source: https://www.rdrnews.com/2022/04/09/county-state-law-enforcement-sued-over-shooting/
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