Columnists in NM Political Report
Pat Davis is the founder and publisher of NM Political Report, City Desk ABQ and the nm.news network. He is a recovering politician having served eight years as an Albuquerque City Councilor and, in another life, served as a police officer and nonprofit organizer.
As footage of increasingly violent, and ultimately deadly, ICE tactics in Minneapolis captured national attention last month, a local district attorney 1,200 miles away worked his way into the national conversation with public pledge to prosecute any ICE officers in his jurisdiction who pursued arrests without judicial warrants or with unlawful force. .
As we reported at the time, within days of sending a strongly-worded warning to local ICE officials, he appeared on CNN and was mentioned in national papers. He turned those appearances into a $60,000 television ad buy for his campaign for governor back home in the Albuquerque media market.
No one who has followed Bernalillo County District Attorney Sam Bregman’s career could have been surprised to see him in front of a television camera, but to be there pledging to prosecute police accused of wrongdoing instead of defending them represents a judicial evolution, or deliberate political repositioning, depending on who you ask.
For years before being appointed, and later elected, district attorney, Bregman was a “go-to” defense attorney for law enforcement officers accused of wrongdoing, including in some of Albuquerque’s high-profile misconduct cases.
Randi McGinn, a plaintiff’s trial lawyer herself, served as a special prosecutor in 2016 for the district attorney’s office Bregman now leads. At the time he was defending Albuquerque police officers accused of killing James Boyd, a homeless and mentally disturbed man camping in open space in the city’s remote foothills east of the city. The jury ultimately deadlocked and a new district attorney, Raul Torréz, now the state’s attorney general, chose not to pursue a new trial.
But during the initial trial, Bregman argued that the prosecution of officers involved in the Boyd case had “a chilling effect on police officers throughout this city.” (NMPR does not identity persons by name if they were not convicted of crimes).
The U.S. Department of Justice later sued Albuquerque for a pattern of civil rights violations, citing the Boyd shooting, among others, as evidence of a department’s inability to police itself.
When I spoke with McGinn just after Bregman’s ICE ad appeared on local TV, she took a skeptical, if not hopeful view. “I’m glad he has finally seen the light,” she joked tongue-in-cheek.
As a high-profile defense attorney, Bregman has frequently defended law enforcement officers accused of abusing their authority in both internal investigations and criminal cases. In 2014, he represented an Albuquerque police officer who was fired for failing to take action during a child abuse investigation involving Omaree Varela, a 9-year old later killed by his stepfather.
He also defended Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Sergeant Dave Priemazon who was charged and convicted of assault after kicking a handcuffed suspect in the head following a foot chase. In reporting at the time by KRQE, Bregman told the court that the case was not about the actions of a police officer abusing a prisoner but “about whether or not this man kicked another man in his head. That’s all this case is about.”
Bregman also defended a number of corrections officers at Bernalillo County’s Metropolitan Detention Center against internal investigations and criminal charges. In Nov. 2022, just two months before being appointed district attorney by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, Bregman defended two MDC officers charged with involuntary manslaughter for sitting on and kneeing a restrained inmate, causing his death. A jury later found both officers not guilty.
But despite building a firm and practice around police defense, Bregman has occasionally, and more recently, stood on the other side of a courtroom. In 2020 and 2022, he represented families of two people shot by Las Cruces police officers. In the case of Amilia Baca, a senior citizen with dementia who was shot by police, the city later paid $2.75 million to Baca’s family, according to news reports at the time.
I reached out to Bregman through his campaign for comment. A spokesperson provided this statement:
Sam has both prosecuted and defended law enforcement over his nearly four-decade career. And while he has great respect for law enforcement, he has made it very clear that no one is above the law. As far as ICE is concerned, he unequivocally stated that if there is evidence that an officer has violated a person’s rights under New Mexico law, they will be prosecuted. This stance is consistent with Sam’s beliefs and how he has practiced law for his entire career.
To be honest, there isn’t much a governor can do if federal officials decide to make your state the center of their national immigration agenda. Just ask Gov. Tim Walz in Minnesota.
But that isn’t stopping candidates across the country from localizing the fight.
For her part, former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland was one of the first national figures to join the “Abolish ICE” movement in 2018 during her first run for Congress. Fast forward six years and she is using social media to take followers along as she joins anti-ICE protests and tours ICE prisons in New Mexico while calling for their closure, as she did last week.
Bregman and Haaland square off in the Democratic primary in early June, so stay tuned.