Jan. 12--A New Mexico prosecutor on Monday proposed murder charges against two Albuquerque police officers in connection with the shooting death of a homeless camper last year that was captured by a helmet-mounted camera.
Bernalillo County Dist. Atty. Kari Brandenburg filed documents in court containing an open charge of murder against Officer Dominique Perez and former Det. Keith Sandy, who was allowed to retire from the department eight months after the shooting.
Brandenburg has scheduled an afternoon news conference to discuss potential charges.
The case centers on James Boyd, 36, who had been camping in a restricted area of open space at Albuquerque's eastern edge. During a four-hour standoff with police who had responded to a call from a local resident, he brandished two small knives multiple times.
Boyd, who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, had been acting erratically during the incident.
In the video from an officer's helmet camera, Boyd appears to be complying with commands to leave the area when an officer throws a flash-bang grenade at his feet and a second officer releases a police dog that attacks Boyd. Boyd again draws knives from his pockets and turns away from officers, who open fire, hitting him in the back.
Under New Mexico law, Brandenburg may file charges via criminal information, which means she does not need to seek an indictment from a grand jury. Brandenburg's office said she will file an open charge of murder, which means that a trial jury could consider a range of counts -- from manslaughter to first-degree murder.
The type of flash-bang grenade used in the Boyd incident is itself the subject of a ProPublica investigation released Monday, which found that the grenades, while described as less lethal, are often as hot as lava and can leave those exposed to their effects with burns and scarring.
The Albuquerque Police Department has come under intense scrutiny in connection with a string of violent encounters with the public. Since 2010, Albuquerque police officers have shot 37 people, 27 of them fatally.
The shootings prompted a federal investigation, and the department is the subject of a consent decree with the U.S. Justice Department. The Justice Department announced in April that its investigation found that Albuquerque police have used deadly force more often than necessary, resulting in a series of unjustified fatal shootings.
The settlement calls for the police department to deescalate situations that involve people in a mental health crisis and to minimize the use of force. Elements of the decree, including the selection of a federal monitor to oversee the department's compliance, are still being negotiated.
The federal action follows a spate of police killings that captured national attention last year, brought to light in part by cellphones that make video recording readily available.
In Houston, the recent indictment of Officer Juventino Castro ended with a grand jury clearing him in the death of 26-year-old Jordan Baker. Castro was off-duty and believed Baker matched the description of a robbery suspect. Baker, an unarmed black man, ran from Castro, who chased him into an alley, where Castro said he fired on Baker when Baker charged him.
Indictments of police officers in fatal shootings are rare, and quantifying such cases is problematic: The FBI doesn't collect data on police use of deadly force. Civilian efforts to collect this data nationally are in their initial stages, but rely on crowd-sourcing the data.
A bill to count the number of people who die at the hands of officers was passed in 2000 and expired in 2006. It was revived late last year in Congress and signed by President Obama.
The failure to count such deaths has been fuel for critics of police use-of-force policies who contend that officers are assured a soft landing before a grand jury because prosecutors have to rely on those officers' testimony in other criminal cases.
In the last five years, the Justice Department has opened more than 20 investigations into police departments. That has resulted in 15 consent decrees, including departments in New Orleans; Portland, Ore.; Seattle and Albuquerque. Several other departments have reached out-of-court agreements.
The Justice Department has sued four police agencies that rejected its findings, including the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department, which includes Phoenix.
An investigation into the Ferguson, Mo., Police Department is ongoing.
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UPDATE
12:03 p.m.: This article has been updated throughout with details on the documents being filed and background on ongoing investigations by the Justice Department.
This article was originally published at 9:58 a.m.
