FBI documents reveal long-running DWI bribery scheme in Bernalillo County
Unsealed FBI records say APD, sheriff’s and state police officers helped run a DWI bribery network with Thomas Clear III and Rick Mendez for years.
Fresh FBI documents have deepened a scandal that has shaken trust in Albuquerque policing and Bernalillo County’s DWI enforcement. The newly unsealed records say officers and deputies from the Albuquerque Police Department, Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office and New Mexico State Police worked with attorney Thomas Clear III and paralegal-investigator Ricardo “Rick” Mendez in a so-called “DWI Enterprise” that dated to at least 2008.
The scheme, as described in court records and federal filings, relied on disappearing cases and compromised arrests. Officers allegedly withheld required Motor Vehicle Division paperwork after DWI arrests, handed it to Mendez and let him contact suspects and steer them to Clear. Prosecutors and investigators have said the operation also traded in cash, gift cards, hotel rooms, sporting event tickets, free legal advice, Christmas gifts and baby gifts. Former APD officer Harvey Johnson Jr. later admitted in a plea deal that he began participating in February 2023 and that conspirators could recruit and train new officers for extra pay.
The fallout has already been felt in Metro Court and in the city’s own DWI numbers. APD’s timeline says the department had been aware of a related Clear allegation from 2003, and an Internal Affairs case in 2014 involved officers allegedly offering to get a woman’s DWI case dismissed if she hired Tom Clear. The department began auto-indexing cases in 2019 under its court-approved settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, but dismissed DWI cases still dropped from 410 in 2021 to 196 in 2022 and 136 in 2023, with a projected 2024 range of 98 to 118 before FBI-related dismissals are counted. The Albuquerque Journal has reported that more than 150 DWI cases were dismissed early in the investigation, and later more than 200 pending cases were tossed because officer credibility had been compromised.
The case moved into public view after FBI searches in January 2024 at multiple homes and Clear’s office. By spring 2026, prosecutors were still unsealing and organizing more than one million documents, along with wiretaps and search warrants, before sentencing could proceed. More than a dozen people had been charged, and five former APD officers plus a former Bernalillo County sheriff’s deputy had already pleaded guilty by late April 2025.
APD Chief Harold Medina said the department first learned of allegations in December 2022 and contacted the FBI in October 2023. Mayor Tim Keller said any officer tied to corruption would never work for the city again and should be held accountable. For Bernalillo County residents who watched DWI cases collapse, the next test is whether APD, the district attorney’s office and allied agencies can rebuild a system that catches drunk drivers without allowing insiders to decide which cases survive.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
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