Bernalillo County sheriff’s lieutenant placed on leave after DWI stop

A Bernalillo County sheriff’s lieutenant is on administrative leave after a weekend DWI checkpoint stop in northwest Albuquerque, putting the sheriff’s office back under a bright public spotlight on accountability. Paul Montoya, who has worked for the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office since October 2011, was cited after the encounter near Western Trail and Coors NW.

The stop happened Sunday, June 14, after officers believed the woman driving may have been impaired, and deputies also believed Montoya may have been under the influence, the report said. Montoya was cited for having an open alcohol container in a vehicle and for littering. The account says he removed a tea-and-vodka can from the vehicle, dumped the liquid onto the pavement and crushed the can before the encounter ended.

BCSO spokesperson Jayme Gonzales said Montoya had already been placed on leave since Monday, June 15, and that the agency could not say much more because an internal affairs investigation was ongoing. That leaves the case in the hands of the sheriff’s office’s internal accountability process, which is part of a larger structure that also includes county oversight. Bernalillo County’s sheriff advisory and review board committee charter says the Administration, Budget and Personnel Committee may request completed disciplinary actions and finalized internal affairs investigations.

The timing is awkward for an agency that publicly frames its work around integrity and accountability, especially because Bernalillo County’s DWI Prevention Program says both BCSO and the Albuquerque Police Department provide DWI enforcement through checkpoints and saturation patrols. A senior BCSO officer being cited at one of those enforcement efforts raises the same question residents often ask after police misconduct cases: whether the process really is the same for everyone, or whether rank changes the outcome.

That question has carried extra weight in Albuquerque and Bernalillo County since the broader DWI corruption scandal that surfaced in early 2025, when federal reporting tied misconduct to officers from APD, BCSO and New Mexico State Police. For a sheriff’s office already trying to restore confidence after that damage, the Montoya case is more than a traffic stop. It is another test of whether the county’s law-enforcement leadership can enforce the rules on its own ranks with the same force it expects on the street.