Q&A: Albuquerque families seek accountability after police shootings

One day in April 2011, Stephen and Renetta Torres rushed home after receiving a call from their neighbors about a large police presence—mobile crime lab, SWAT team, armored cars, etc.—at their Albuquerque, New Mexico, residence.

The police were looking for their 27-year-old son, Christopher, who had been home alone. The officers claimed they had come to serve an arrest warrant for Christopher about a road rage incident months earlier. Christopher, who suffered from schizophrenia, refused to speak to the officers, so they moved in on him, jumping a fence and entering the Torres’ backyard. According to court documents, from that point, only a few minutes elapsed before Christopher was shot in the back three times by C.J. Brown, a plainclothes officer at the scene.

The cops accused Christopher of taking control of Brown’s gun, but a judge in a civil suit would later rule that the story told by Albuquerque Police Department (APD) officers likely didn’t hold water, awarding a $6 million judgment in favor of the Torres family. But Brown was never disciplined over the incident and he remains on the force.

Since 2010, the APD has shot more than 40 people. Twenty-seven of the victims died. Yet there’s been very little punishment meted out for those incidents. An investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ) found in early 2014 that the APD “engages in a pattern or practice of excessive force including the use of unreasonable deadly force.”

After the March 16, 2014, shooting of a homeless man named James Boyd by an off-duty cop was captured on a police body camera, the city’s hand was forced. The officer who shot Boyd, Keith Sandy, as well as one of his colleagues, Dominique Perez, are currently on trial for murder.

“Fault Lines” spoke to Stephen and Renetta Torres’ parents about their son’s death and the overly aggressive behavior of police in Albuquerque. An edited version of the conversation follows.

Before everything that happened with Christopher, did you guys have an idea of what was actually going with the police in Albuquerque?

Renetta: I am ashamed to admit that I was probably one of those individuals who, you know, you’re watching the news and [the police] are very convincing that [the victims] were armed and they were dangerous, and the officers were in a position where they had no choice but to shoot to kill. Of course since Christopher’s shooting we went back and did a lot of research, and this is decades-long behavior by the Albuquerque Police Department. It’s not a small window of the last seven to eight years. It goes back quite a distance. But I didn’t know that. Then you start to look at things a little bit more in depth, and you’re not so quick to take whatever they’re spinning and however they’re feeding the story to you.

Stephen: I’ve always been somewhat of a news hound, and so before this happened with our family, I had heard and I was aware that there were problems in the police department. But like Renetta, I was not aware of the depth of the problems. Once we started doing the research, I mean, you get to a point where after a while you don’t want to do it anymore because you don’t want to hear anymore about what’s been going on. I mean the problems our police department has been having over the last 20 to 30 years with insurance fraud and prostitution and drugs within the police department, abuse of steroids.

Renetta: It’s truly disturbing to know that kind of thing is going on in your community with officers that are supposed to protect you and protect the public, and that is not at all as it plays out with what is occurring in the community. I think the other tragedy is that the good officers were remaining silent, and basically I think that’s just condoning the deeds of the rogue officers. Always the question was: How large was the group, the bad apples? Do they outnumber the good police officers?

Do you actually understand what happened, the circumstances leading to Christopher’s death?

Stephen: We will never know the full story, the whole truth, because the story kept changing. Initially they were saying they were coming just to interview Christopher. And then they said, no, they were coming to arrest him. And then they changed their story back to they were coming out to just question him. There was some alleged road rage incident that we never even got full information about.

But as we understand it, the police officers came to the front door, rang the doorbell, knocked on the door. Nobody answered. And then one of them walked to the side of the house because he maybe wanted to see what was going on. Or maybe he heard something. And yes, that’s when he saw Christopher in the side yard here. And so he approached Christopher and asked him who he was, you know, “Are you Christopher Torres?” Christopher said, “Yes,” and supposedly they said, “We want to talk to you.” Christopher backed up, and I don’t know if the officer thought he was getting ready to run or what he thought, but somehow that gave him justification to jump the fence and rush Christopher and tackle him to the ground.

Christopher is lying face down on the ground, and these officers are apparently trying to handcuff him, and there is a struggle. And then again the story changes: One version of the story is that one of the officer’s handcuffs got loose, and they saw the handcuffs loose on the ground. They thought at one point, he’s got a knife. And then the other story that finally came out is that one of the officers claimed that somehow during the struggle that Christopher had actually managed to get his hand on the officer’s gun and take it out of his holster and gain control of it. How’s he able to do that with two officers on his back? It’s just, you can’t. It’s an incredible story.

But anyway Christopher is faced down on the ground, the two officers are struggling to try and get him handcuffed and at one point, one of the officers may have told him, “You better cooperate, or I’m going to shoot you.” And that’s what they proceeded to do. Officer Brown took his service revolver out and at point blank range, literally with the barrel pressed against Christopher’s back, he fired three shots into Christopher.

What was Christopher’s funeral like? Was there any simmering anger at the APD there?

Stephen: I don’t think there was a lot of anger. Christopher was well liked. He was a very gentle person. We didn’t realize Christopher had so many friends. The church was packed.

Renetta: The church holds a little over 1,000 people.

Stephen: And it was overflowing. There was certainly a lot of sadness, a lot of bewilderment, wondering how this could have happened.

Renetta: I think that was most of what we were feeling in the days and weeks after Christopher was shot. You just can’t believe it happened. I think that Christopher, his health, his well-being and safety was always such a priority for us, and he’s taken in the very place that should be his sanctuary. It was hard.

Can you give us some context about Christopher, his life, his struggles?

Renetta: I think we like to categorize Christopher’s story as one of being a success. He had a job, part-time job. He was such a warm and caring individual.

The day he was killed, just minutes before police arrived, he had been across the street visiting some neighbors who are in their 80s. He went to check on them. He’d gone to the grocery store. He’d help them clean their yard. He’d help them clean their pool. And they were the last people to see Christopher alive. There were people whose lives he had touched that we were not even aware of. But he was very caring. I think he handled his illness with a great deal of grace and dignity.

When did you realize that what happened to Christopher was part of a larger pattern of behavior by the APD?

Stephen: Those first few weeks we were just in shock, going through the motions of daily life. But a month after Christopher was shot, Alan Gomez was shot, and the circumstances were just so similar—a needless shooting. Alan Gomez was turned around and walking away from police officers when they shot him in the back. That finally woke me up, and I realized we’ve got to try and do something.

Renetta: Mike Gomez [Alan’s father], he certainly, I think, started to bring the community of families that had been affected by APD shootings together. Mike, in all of his grief, seemed to recognize there was a need and a call to action, and he started contacting the family members and saying we’ve got to meet and we’ve got to talk. And the first meeting was held at his home, and there were about 15 families there.

Fifteen families?

Stephen: All sharing similar stories.

That must have been a big surprise for you guys to see that.

Renetta: It was. And their stories were just disturbing. I mean, it was almost too much to bear. I have to tell you for quite a while you’re just fearful after you hear these horrible stories of these families that have lost their loved ones at the hands of these rogue officers. Some of them went back to 2007, 2006. As frightened as you are, you know you’ve got to do something, and there’s strength in numbers. I certainly think that we were bolstered by the other families and we just moved forward.

But Mike Gomez was very pivotal in getting the families together. I think absent Mike Gomez, who knows, we might have at some point kind of come out of this fog we were in. But I think he certainly mobilized us.