Editor,
Recently, the City of Albuquerque is again getting the shaft because of the ignorant actions of Albuquerque's finest.
Oscar Davis, a former military police officer at Kirtland Air Force Base, has been awarded a total of $120,000 because of the actions of Albuquerque Police Department Officer Tom Sholtis.
Five years ago, Davis was stopped by Sholtis and ticketed for speeding. Sholtis ran his info in a database and let Davis go. Then, Sholtis made a request for fingerprint info to New York. A fuzzy fax came back and Sholtis believed the man in the picture (so blurred as to be nearly indistinguishable), a man wanted for drug charges, was Oscar Davis.
He arrested Davis and took him to the station, where it was learned there was a mistake. Well, Sholtis' mistake cost the taxpayers $120,000 and he has a complaint pending against him by the wife of a former FBI agent who claims he broke her arm while arresting her for the vicious crime of being in a city park after hours. Likely, we will take it in the shorts on that one too.
Sholtis should be terminated permanently and have any pension revoked as well. He is a liability to the city, the citizens and the taxpayers. Why he has not been fired baffles me. Is it because mayors are afraid of the police union? Screw the police union! What is more important to the scheme of things; the police union or the integrity of the city and regard for taxpayers?
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The man is nothing more than a schoolyard bully with a badge and should be terminated permanently and forced to pay part of the award out of his own money (which was stolen from the taxpayers as far as I'm concerned).
Now we can see why New Mexico and Albuquerque rank low on the quality of life scale and the economic scale. Who would want to come here knowing that the city, a self-insured entity (sheer brilliance there), is constantly paying for the incompetence of its employees and that the cops are nearly as bad as the crooks; they just happen to spread the misery around and cost everybody because of their ignorant conduct.
Brandon D. Curtis
UNM student
