Plot thickens in officer's firing

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — Looking back at what happened on Oct. 4, Archie Romero said he now realizes just how stupid it was for him to think that a probationary police officer would be believed if he accused a connected cop of using excessive force.

He did and now that he's been fired, city officials are talking about how he lied about the incident, and he's planning to file a lawsuit against the city.

Romero, 37, who came back to work last May after serving here from 1993 to 1995, finds himself having to fight allegations that he falsely accused Sgt. Matt Wright of beating up a prisoner on Oct. 4 after the prisoner had been handcuffed.

A 13-year veteran in law enforcement, Romero said he came back to Gallup after learning that salaries had sharply increased since the last time he had been here. He was looking at making an extra $5 an hour and bringing his family his Navajo wife is from the Window Rock area home.

Once back in Gallup, he began settling in and before the Oct. 4 incident, was looking at a successful career here, getting promoted to patrolman first class after two months and then a few months later being chosen to work with the department's high-risk entry unit as well as on narcotics cases.

Then came Oct. 4.

After the search
A report came over the police radio that officials were looking for Derek Calderon to arrest him on a felony warrant.

Police had narrowed down their search to the Red Bluff Trailer Park area and Romero joined in the search, locating Calderon hiding in the weeds nearby. Two other probationary officers joined him and handcuffs were placed on Calderon without incident.

Then, he said, he saw Wright come up and start to yell and kick Calderon and come down on his upper torso.

"I was totally shocked and disgusted," Romero said, adding that he had never seen this kind of excessive force happen in his presence before. He looked at the other two officers and noticed that they were looking away, apparently so they could say later that they had seen nothing.

Neither Romero or the other officers came to Calderon's aid. "It happened so fast. It was probably over in less than 10 seconds. This was a total disregard for human life."

Romero said he knew about Wright's reputation in the department. Over the space of the last couple of years, according to Romero, Wright had been in a number of incidents where complaints had been filed against him for excessive force.

In a couple of cases, Romero said, the police department and the city had to settle cases with the complainants.

But Romero claims that Wright received no punishment because he was well-connected within the department, having friends in high places who could protect him. "He was never even placed on administrative leave," Romero said.

Capt. John Allen, a spokesman for the Gallup Police Department, said he couldn't comment on Wright's personnel record.

"Per the city manager, we cannot talk about any personnel matter and especially not if it's involved in this case," he said.

Taking a risk
Still on probation, Romero said he knew he had no power in the department, especially against someone like Wright, but decided he had no recourse but to tell his supervisor when he came back to work a week later about what happened.

He realized he was taking a risk, especially since he doubted that the other two probationary officers would risk their careers to support him. In retrospect, he said, it was "probably stupid" for him to tell what he had seen.

Several months passed and Romero said he assumed that the higher-ups in the department decided the best way to handle the situation was to "sweep it under the carpet."

But then something happened in March because he was called into the Internal Affairs office and asked if he would go to Albuquerque and take a lie detector test.

To this day, he doesn't know why the investigation was reinstated. It's possible, he said, that the Calderon family informed the city that it was planning to file a lawsuit.

Taking the testIn any case, he agreed to take the lie detector test and went to Albuquerque where it was to be administered by the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office.

"As soon as I walked in, I realized something was wrong," Romero said. "They treated me like a suspect and like I was a low-life."

He suspects now that the sheriff's department had been told by officials here in Gallup that the purpose of the test was to prove that he was lying, which is something that still puzzles him since there would be no benefit to him in lying against Wright since there were two other officers present who could have spoken out in Wright's favor.

(Neither Wright or the two other officers have agreed to take lie detector tests - see separate story).

He failed the test.

While city officials say he failed the test completely, Romero said he was told afterwards by the officers conducting the test that his account of the beating was upheld, but the problem was the sequence.

What the officers conducting the test tried to do, Romero said, was give him an out. All he had to say was that the beating occurred before the handcuffs had gone on and during the time Calderon was resisting.

If he did that, Romero said, the whole thing would have probably gone away.

He said he also questioned the validity of the test in his case since he had been under treatment since the early 1990s for exposure to sarrin gas during the time he was fighting in the first Gulf War in Iraq.

This created nerve damage and as he said this, he displayed cards listing him as a disabled veteran and giving him the right to be treated in veteran hospitals.

When he was informed that he failed the test, he still wasn't too worried.

Test's aftermath
He thought the worst that would happen was that he would be placed on administrative leave with pay while an investigation was conducted and he was pretty sure that if an investigation was done by an independent organization, such as the state police, it would verify his version of what happened.

On March 23, he was told to report the next day at 2 p.m. into his supervisor's office. When he got there he saw the deputy chief and three police supervisors.

They came right to the point.

A piece of paper was shoved under his face. The paper said his services were no longer required and that he was to turn in his badge as soon as possible and leave the station.

"I was in total shock and disbelief," he said. "I couldn't comprehend why I was being fired in this way."

He said he still couldn't understand why the department didn't follow the usual procedure and call for an investigation unless they just wanted to get him out of the department as fast as possible and hope that it would end there.

While city officials mention the lie detector failure was the main reason for the dismissal, Romero said he has also heard rumors that the department thought he was working with the Calderon family in a possible lawsuit against the city.

City Attorney George Kozeliski said Wednesday night that, to the best of his knowledge, no lawsuit has been filed against the police department or the city by the Calderon family.

Christopher Delara, the Calderon family's attorney, said he plans on filing a lawsuit against the city in the next two weeks, claiming that Derek was beaten up while in handcuffs. He said that the city was informed about the lawsuit before Romero was required to take the lie detector test.

He said the lawsuit will also claim that there has been a number of incidents against his client by members of the city police department after the Oct. 4 incident.

Honeyfield said if the alleged victim in this case, Derek Calderon, agreed to take a lie detector, this would trigger lie detector tests for the other officers involved in the case.

Romero said he has had no contact with the family at all and the only time he spoke to Derek Calderon (except for giving him a few simple commands during the arrest like "lie down") was back in 1994 when Derek tried to evade arrest by trying to outrun police.

"My only knowledge of Derek was as a runner so when I heard that he was being sought, I remembered the 1994 incident," Romero said.

Romero said when he finally stopped him, he was told that Calderon had an uncle in the police force, so he decided to give him a warning instead of a citation.

But since then there has been no contact and even today, Romero said, Derek Calderon could walk up to him and he probably wouldn't recognize him.

"When I saw him back in October, it was for only about three minutes and it was pitch dark," he said.

Fighting dismissal
Romero said he tried to play it by the book, appealing the firing to the city manager.

"I waited 19 days and finally got a letter from (City Manager Eric) Honeyfield that my appeal had been denied," he said. "He didn't even call me in to talk to me."

Part of the reason seems to stem from the city learning that Romero had gone to a local newspaper, but Romero said he talked to the press off the record and refused to allow any story to be printed as long as he had a chance to get his job back.

He said if the police just wanted to cover up the incident, he doesn't understand why they took the action they did.

"If that's what they wanted, all they had to do was give me back my job and I would have agreed to resign within a couple of months after I had a chance to find another job elsewhere," Romero said.

He said he realized that there were a lot of questions that could be raised about the honesty of his account, but said it was in the city's interest to determine just who was telling the truth.

Otherwise, they would continue to support an officer who already has a history of excessive violence and may cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages in the future.

When asked what he would do if he was faced with a situation similar to October 4 again, Romero said he hoped he would do the ethical thing and stand up for his duty to protect the citizens of the area even if the person he was protecting was someone on the other side of the law enforcement fence.

But he said he realized now that kind of decision was costly.

"Overall, this was the ethical thing to do but I realized that I would be putting my family in jeopardy; so no, I wouldn't do it again," he said.