Text and/or other creative content from this version of Albuquerque Police Department was copied or moved into James Boyd shooting with this edit. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists.

This page should not be delete as it stands the ramifications are still unfolding. The Shooting event seems to be causing a seachange concerning mental health and policing policy and practices in New Mexico. The political fallout seems to be negated by speedy resolution of cause and effect and restoration of the public trust brought on by the various layers of government/s applying best practice simultaneously.

Due to on-going multi-layered levels attached to this Shooting it could lead to a new social pact policing model State/s wide.

this is a very controversial shooting in a city with very complacent media. It was A DoJ investigation before Ferguson, so there is reason to suspect slant. I do see a number of mugshots online, so apparently he did have police contact, but I cannot find any court records online for anyone named James Boyd anywhere in New Mexico, and there should be some if he had ever had any kind of hearing, even for jaywalking. Absolutely all court case are included in this database; parking tickets, traffic, everything. Possibly they purge dead defendants (?) or possibly he just got rousted a few times. If the latter, he was hardly the dangerous criminal the police account portrayed (?) Elinruby ( talk) 04:48, 22 August 2015 (UTC) reply

PS - this is a question - if anyone has a real reference, please bring it.

@ Elinruby:I've been aware of this situation since Boyd was killed. I watched the video of his death and attributed it in large part to two impetuous and impatient, trigger happy officers. There were too many officers on the scene, and their presence both wasted time and escalated the situation of dealing with a very difficult and disturbed individual. Having extensive experience in the field of both criminal justice and mental health casework, including with the homeless M.I. I believe there was insufficient intervention from trained caseworkers for the mentally disabled who might have provided services forestalled and/or prevented this death. Clearly, Boyd was of little danger to anyone but himself, in this instance, but he was quite disturbed, angry, and had attacked others in the past. His unfortunate death however brought attention to the shortcomings of the ABQ police force and LEO in general in dealing with the mentally ill, especially in the withdrawal for funding for appropriate intervention of this class of people. Our society is much more willing to spend money for response than prevention or amelioration. All that said (excuse while I get down from my soapbox) this was perhaps the worst example of poor editing and oversight on Wikipedia I've ever seen. I cleaned up a number of bare URLs, added more to bring the article more current. There are still sixteen bare URLs in the references. Without going through the history, I suspect many have been placed there by unregistered users, and wonder if same as a class might be permanently blocked from editing this article? I looked at the history after realizing that USER:Elinruby had done a mammoth effort (134 edits) to clean up this article in the past, but that afterward, the same sort of careless and/or inept editors who had caused the problem earlier continued to botch it. Now that the trials are bringing the case once more to public attention I hope that someone can devote similar efforts to it now and in the future. I'm far to busy to do so. It presents a very important article and issues, including because of the social and public policy aspects, as well as the Wikipedia editing ones. We should all thank "Elinruby" for his or her dedication. Lastly, there seem to be cites about Boyd's history that would tend to confirm his criminal record. Maybe I can help there. Activist ( talk) 13:41, 25 September 2016 (UTC) reply

@Activist: I'm not sure that this is the appropriate venue for this discussion, but since you stated your opinion – I think that calling the officers who shot Mr. Boyd "impetuous, impatient and trigger happy" is inappropriate. They spent about 3 1/2 hours dealing with Mr. Boyd, in an effort to get him to put down his weapons and walk off the hill. Due to his mental illness, they were unable to do so. If you have evidence of previous incidents involving these officers that show that either of them was "trigger happy" please post it. The officer didn't fire until they perceived that the K−9 handler was in jeopardy. Given the terrain, time of day, seriousness of the offense, the fact that Mr. Boyd had committed repeated assaults with a deadly weapon on LEOs (Law Enforcement Officers), and the fact that he had a tactical advantage, having a large number of officers present, to prevent his escape is reasonable. You say that you think this is "wasting time" but that seems to be in direct opposition to your statement that they were "impetuous and impatient." It's also interesting that you think that it escalated the situation. When possible, LEOs bring enough people to handle the problem. At times, more than are necessary show up, but given that "too many is better than too few," that's not an issue. It's easier to send people back to their duties than to call for more people, who may be miles away and may not respond in time. There were numerous supervisors, both on the scene, and monitoring the situation from the command center, who if they thought that there were too many officers present could have, and would have told some of them to clear and go back to their normal duties. The area in question is open desert and Mr. Boyd could have fled in any direction at any time, greatly complicating the situation and increasing the danger to himself and the officers present. Having a large number of officers present, while it may have affected his impaired mental state, was helpful to prevent his escape, should he try to leave the scene.

I too have extensive experience in the field of criminal justice. I spent 30 years in LE and served on a SWAT team, as department Rangemaster, and was a use of force instructor on several police tools, as well as many other assignments. I retired with the rank of Sgt. I've testified as a use of force expert several times in municipal and superior courts. I'm certainly not a mental health caseworker but have dealt with the mentally ill and homeless, hundreds of times.

You say that there was "insufficient intervention from trained caseworkers ..." in this case. Unfortunately you overlook the constraints of time, location and time of day. The discussions with Mr. Boyd went on for over three hours. You may have noticed that when the incident was finally resolved, it was starting to get dark. This is not an area where it's possible to bring in lights to illuminate the area. And so continuing to talk to Mr. Boyd would have occurred in the dark, where it would have been difficult, if not impossible to see him, and to see what he's doing. In more urban areas, LE allows the situations to go on, sometimes for days. But here, that wasn't possible. It needed to come to a conclusion in a timely manner. Besides being a danger to himself, Mr. Boyd was a danger to the officers and before they had arrived, to any passerby who happened to bump into him. He thought he was "a messenger from God," that he was "working for the Department of Defense," and that he was "empowered to kill anyone who interfered with his investigation." And he was armed with two knives. As you point out, "he was quite disturbed, angry, had attacked other in the past."

As to "the shortcomings of the ABQ police force and LEO in general in dealing with the mentally ill" – nonsense! LE deals with the mentally ill thousands, perhaps millions of times a day in the US. RARELY does it result in such an outcome. If nothing untoward happens, and that's the most common result, you don't hear about it. But given the "If it bleeds, it leads" ethos of today's press, when it go sideways, it's news around the world. It sells advertising, so it's kept at the top of the news. I agree that more should be done with and for these people, but until that's done, we work with what we're given. Beanyandcecil ( talk) 18:10, 28 September 2016 (UTC) reply

@ Beanyandcecil: @ Elinruby: Before going to work for the ABQ PD, Sandy had been fired from the state police for engaging in fraud, on the job. Keith Sandy said on arrival at the scene, before walking up the hill, caught on the dash cam, that he was going to taze Boyd. He also said he was going to shoot his penis off, calling him a "******* lunatic," while still quite a distance from him. He does not turn his lapel or helmet camera on. Having between 19 and 40-something officers on the scene and on the clock, is certainly "wasting time." Boyd is in crisis, agitated, and the crowd of uniforms can't have helped but make him more so, when calm is called for. You can see the video of Boyd shouldering a large knapsack and picking up and holding other objects in his hands, starting to walk calmly downhill, apparently complying with the officers' requests. Sandy quickly escalates the situation, throws a flash bang at him which explodes and turns him around with his back toward Sandy and Perez. He's shot and topples forward, away from the officers, dropping the bag and other objects and grasps a knife in each hand as he's face down on the ground. Sandy has shot him in both arms, shattering the humerus bone in his right upper arm. Perez, who is lower down the hill, shoots him in the lower back. The bullet destroys Boyd's spleen, transverse colon and lung before it lodges in his left deltoid muscle. Perez shoots beanbag rounds and hits Boyd in the buttock. The K9 is released and he begins to chew Boyd's right leg. He's told to drop the knives but he would not have had control of his right hand, possibly not his left as well. Where's Boyd going to "escape to?" He's high up on the U-Mount hill, in the desert, hundreds of feet from a subdivision, with all those officers strung out below him, and what might he be escaping from? The LEO's are there to insure that he leaves his campsite. He's not about to leave all his possessions nor is he physically capable of running uphill through the boulders and away, and he has not physically assaulted anyone. He's 38 years old, high mileage, weighs 102 kilos/225 pounds (probably without his arm). The DOJ report, which avoided commenting on the Boyd case because it was under investigation, repeatedly criticized the lack of effective command on the force, chronic overuse of often deadly force. It appears that Sandy was literally calling the shots. Well I've worked with over a hundred homeless (when I outreached them) mentally ill clients, many as agitated as Boyd was. I got all but a couple to voluntarily accept medication and treatment, outreached probably a quarter of them in situations not at all unlike Boyd's, literally living out in the desert amongst the scorpions and rattlesnakes. I got all of them on Supplemental Security Income save for one who qualified for Social Security Disability. I've run ex-offender programs and community and prison substance abuse treatment programs. It appeared to be rapidly coming to an acceptable conclusion before Sandy escalated it. I was wrong about the negotiator, who had handled hundreds of cases.I suspect that any "passerby" in this hiking area would have given him a wide berth. It's unlikely that he was looking for a confrontation. You may not even have looked at the film of the shooting, from your take on it. It's quite gruesome. If you want a better understanding of how out of control the APD was, you need to read the entire DOJ report which goes into exhaustive detail about other cases, reviews and summarizes documentation and deficient training procedures, analyzes chronic failure of supervision which actually congratulated inept and violent perpetrators and their handling of crisis situations. I should add that the Boyd family sued for $1.7 million, the city fought it, and lost a $5 million judgment which indicates how the jury perceived it. The total bill for it and other cases it's lost, after similar mishandling, have cost taxpayers in the tens of millions, if the city is self insured or assuming its premiums went up commensurate with their prior and subsequent settlements. Let me know when you've read this and I'll erase part of my comments. Activist ( talk) 15:21, 29 September 2016 (UTC) reply

hi @ Beanyandcecil:, have you seen the DoJ report? Elinruby ( talk) 04:58, 29 September 2016 (UTC) reply

@ Activist: thank you. I used to live in Albuquerque and was very perturbed by this case. The online video and 911 tapes all point to the conclusions you and I reached but Wikipedia in its innocence presumes that the Albuquerque Journal is as a secondary source more objective. The question about court cases was heartfelt. I once took a couple of parking tickets to court, and *they* are in that database. So if you can help please do. I'll try to get to this again soon as I know that two of the police officers are going on trial soon. Elinruby ( talk) 17:44, 25 September 2016 (UTC) PS don't be so hard on subsequent editors -- most of them were probably similarly perturbed but did not know wiki syntax/policies. Elinruby ( talk) 17:46, 25 September 2016 (UTC) reply

@ Elinruby: Wikipedia owes you. What an immense cleanup you did. The problem is with unregistered users, you can't write them to give them a clue, so you can't tell if it's laziness or actually being naive about the process. I got into it with another editor who scrubs some pages that I'm on often. He erases hours of work in a 30-second swath, just because he can, and Wikilawyers it to death. He too posts bare URLs when he's (?) savaging an article, thought he's made 30,000 or so posts so has no excuse. Oh, one more thing. There are some very good reporters on this beat in Albuquerque, Scott Sandlin with the ABQ Journal for instance. She's a whiz! But papers, pressed for profits, are shedding ace writers like a labrador in the desert. An award winning investigative reporter in a faraway city wrote me a few weeks ago, when I tipped her to a minor blip in one of her stories. She said, "Our dirty secret is that we no longer have copy editors." They cost more than owners think they should have to spend, or something like that... Activist ( talk) 19:34, 25 September 2016 (UTC) reply

@ Activist: fact is, tho, that most local media at the time parroted the police version that he was a dangerous criminal. And what I mentioned above is strictly speaking original research. Still, years have gone by and the family has won a lawsuit, so matters may have improved. And yes, I have run into my share of opinionated wikilawyers. Feel free to edit further if ya want, but I'll try to pitch in. I am trying to finish up some half-done translations today tho Elinruby ( talk) 19:59, 25 September 2016 (UTC) reply

I've had little experience with LEOs there. I got a ticket outside the federal courthouse, because I parked my handicapped plate car 15' away from a stop sign, I think, instead of the 20' required. Tourists are supposed to Vulcan mind meld, I guess. I wrote to the judge with my "I hope you don't cash this" check. Didn't get an answer. CaChing! It's all about revenue streams. A tourist isn't going to show up in court to ridicule them. The cops were WAY out of control, though, as was exposed by Boyd's death on camera. Bad administration, able business agents fighting their PD cases. The two from Boyd's case are on trial right now, after the killer of what's her name, Hawkes?, got reinstated, I think. 20:12, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

@ Activist: yep the cop who shot Mary Hawkes got his job back, based on the argument that it wasn't fair to penalize him for something everyone was doing. Seriously. Elinruby ( talk) 21:04, 25 September 2016

• @ Elinruby: I looked on my database. For some states, like AZ, it's very good. Others, not so much. NM is probably one. I got zero for Boyd. That may mean it's worthless in NM. However, he had broken some cop's nose. I figured it could have been a parks violation, so checked the federal inmate locator. Could this be him? I checked the federal SS death index and didn't find him as James Boyd. I went through the middle initials, as I didn't have his, after NMI, and got burned out by the "C"s. He would have been born in 75 or 76. So I found this:

JAMES BOYD Register Number: 41172-074 Age: 40 Race: White Sex: Male Released On: 05/02/2014 (Could have had a case closed when they found out he was dead, two months prior.) Hmmm.

@ Activist: possibly. Age looks roughly right. I'll let you know when I'm back in this ... seems to me I saw a middle name somewhere, also. Check Facebook? Not a reliable source of course by it may give you a hypothesis to verify. In related news, Mary Hawke does not have an article. Elinruby ( talk) 23:42, 25 September 2016 (UTC) PS took a quick look. Autopsy report has middle initial M; not sure yet what it stood for. Age 38 dob 4/8/75. I looked at http://metro.nmcourts.gov/ -- where you would expect to find this sort of minor offender for Albuquerque and www.nmcourts.gov, which is statewide, since apparently he was once arrested at White Sands. Wait maybe I have something in Alamogordo using M.... possibly I didn't before? Will update article if I do. Elinruby ( talk) PPS lede says Matthew--if I let that stand I probably was able to verify it. Elinruby ( talk) 00:05, 26 September 2016 (UTC) reply

• I brought the article up tod date with yesterday's testimony and cleaned up still more of the text and citations. Activist ( talk) 13:33, 28 September 2016 (UTC) reply

thanks, @ Activist: all help appreciated Elinruby ( talk) 04:53, 29 September 2016 (UTC) reply

I put the tag on as I recall, and nobody has responded to it in a year. The statement that he appeared to drop the knife is vague considering the number of versions of police video in which the editor might have seen, or thought he'd seen, this. It is not clear to me what happens to the knife, but the police witnesses appear to be unanimous that he was still holding at least one. I believe the statement that he'd dropped it may have been wishful thinking for somebody indignant about this case. I don't nonetheless subscribe to the notion that he still posed a threat, face down with three bullets in him. But I am going to remove that statement since I don't see sources that say it and if the editor was looking at the video that would be original research, which wikipedia frowns upon and this is probably a poster child for why. Elinruby ( talk) 18:15, 29 September 2016 (UTC) reply

If you look at the helmet cam video, in the process when Boyd is shot/mortally wounded, beanbagged and chewed, he falls on his stomach and says "Don't hurt me," and "I can't move." Officers go to him intending to remove the knives from his outstretched hands. One LEO says to another, "step on his hand" and a knife is taken from his right hand. At this point, Boyd is suffering massive and ultimately fatal internal wounds and his right humerus is shattered, to the extent it needed to be amputated as ER doctors were trying to save his life. With the amount of damage his upper arm has suffered, I doubt that it didn't destroy the nerves that might have allowed him to open or close his right hand. Another officer I believe appears to have then removed a knife from his left hand, but I'm not sure if that was it. He had also been shot in the left arm, but the damage was not as extensive as with the right. There doesn't seem to be any resistance with the left arm, voluntary or reflexive. Both hands are brought around behind his back to be cuffed. All that I assume is SOP, in such a situation with a downed, armed suspect. In yesterday's testimony, by the way, there is LEO reference to discussion about whether or not Boyd might have committed a crime for which he might be arrested: Illegal camping did not provide such cause. So his status would have depended on what behavior might be construed as a threat to the officers, any of which would constitute assault. Just before the attempts to taze him and the flash bang, he clearly is saying that he did not want to hurt anyone and "I am not a murderer." He sounds remarkably calm and deliberative to me, for a psychotic person. The prosecutor or her co-counsel correctly imply, I believe, that his apparent physical and spoken intent was to walk down the hill. He had shouldered his backpack, and he then began picking up objects that were not knives from the ground to his right with both hands. One looked like it might be a long white thermos. If he were intent on attacking, it would seem to be unlikely that he would have encumbered his hands. They had pulled officer/negotiator Mikal Monette (sp?) out of the situation, though he had apparently succeeded in convincing Boyd to follow orders. My impression was that Officer Keith Sandy was intent on exercising a use of force, rather than allowing a peaceful resolution of the situation. An officer who until shortly before had been effectively controlling the situation left without a clear explanation and had walked downhill a considerable distance to speak with the resident who had called in the illegal camping complaint on Boyd. One wonders if this was consciously or unconsciously intended to allow Sandy to assume control and/or, if he sensed what was coming. Monette was referred to in the testimony on the afternoon of September 29, 2016, in the trial of the two charged officers, and his name was in the complaint in the lawsuit brought by Boyd's brother against the ABQ PD/City. In previous situations, he had invariably been successful in numerous negotiations. The testimony given by the officers, seemed not to be perjurious, per se, but rather crafted toward giving such an explanation of events that would best somehow confer a veneer of legitimacy to all the LEO actions at the campsite. It appeared somewhat to be focused toward creating reasonable doubts in the minds of those in the jury, that the thrown flash bang grenade, the tazing attempts, and the rifle shots could be construed as having a legitimate basis. The defense only needs to convince a single juror to get a hung jury, or for all, to get an acquittal. Activist ( talk) 10:09, 30 September 2016 (UTC) reply

The defense theory is, I think, that they were protecting the dog and its handler. Elinruby ( talk) 10:51, 2 October 2016 (UTC) reply

Seems a stretch, but they've been stretching, all right. The helmet cam doesn't clearly show how far Boyd was from the LEO's, including the K9 officer, but it was quite a distance. They could have backed up a bit while he passed with no problem. The flash bang was hugely inappropriate and set off the chain of events leading to Boyd's death, in my opinion. I think Boyd kept both knives, but they were described as "pocket knives," that is, w/o a locking blade, so less lethal. The prosecution is doing a good job, but cases like this often tend to be biased, in my experience, jurors giving the LEOs the benefit of the doubt. I wish I had time to watch the proceedings. It took them 45 minutes after Boyd was shot to get him to the E.R. From the helmet cam, you can see that they spent time going through his belongings at the campsite, pulling back covers, while he lay handcuffed and dying, I presume. Activist ( talk) 13:12, 2 October 2016 (UTC) reply

If anyone notices please note this. I have verified that the sentence is correct according the the reference provided.

Also, a technical point: crisis negotiators are part of SWAT, and this testimony says they were not deployed. So apparently he talked to two officers with crisis internetion training but not a crisis negotiator exactly? (?) Elinruby ( talk) 19:10, 29 September 2016 (UTC) reply

This entry is full of conjecture, misquotes, and unsubstantiated opinions that do not belong in an encyclopedia entry. For example, the "Shooting" section states, "Some who have watched the video believe that the dog bit Boyd's hand, but most think it at Police demanded Boyd drop the two camping knives he was carrying." The video clearly shows that Mr. Boyd was never bitten on the hand, The autopsy does not mention it, there is no citation given for this opinion, and the rest of the sentence makes no sense. Another example, the article states, "There were no visible knives in his hands when an officer said 'Do it!' " The actual quotation cited does not contain the word "visible" and it's presence makes little sense. I'm going to do some general cleanup. Beanyandcecil ( talk) 01:23, 4 October 2016 (UTC) reply

At one point the article says, "...officers fired a Taser." At another point it says, "... two Taser weapons were fired at him. One missed, and the other struck his loose sweatshirt and failed to shock him." There is no citation given for the second statement and I've been unable to find such a reference. Unless someone can supply it, I'm going to delete the second reference.

I've also not found any citation for this statement from the article, "Its handler believes it may have accidentally stepped on one of the Taser electrical leads, or in some other way accidentally been Tasered." In fact, stepping on one electrical lead will not result in any current being delivered. It requires two leads for this to happen, otherwise the circuit isn't completed. Can anyone direct me to a source for this statement regarding his dog "panicking" from the handler? Beanyandcecil ( talk) 05:07, 4 October 2016 (UTC) reply