City councilors call out police social media conduct
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – We expect our city officials to behave with a certain level of respect and dignity, and that includes online when they’re speaking on behalf of our city.
So it might not be surprising that snarky replies from the official Albuquerque police’s X – or Twitter – account aren’t sitting well with some city leaders.
During Wednesday night’s city council meeting councilors had a lot to say about those posts. They are not happy about them partly because the flurry of replies – which were all posted Monday night – are a bit vindictive and sarcastic toward some Albuquerque residents.
This is not the first time this happened. So, here is a look at some of the posts.
Former Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White called out the total number of homicides in Albuquerque under Mayor Tim Keller’s administration compared to the previous one.
The APD account replied “You resigned during that administration, why was that?”
In a back-and-forth discussion over what some people said was misreported information on ABQRaw.com, someone replied “I agree with SilverSurfer,” referencing someone’s username. The APD account sarcastically replied “I agree with SilverSurfer.”
When local business owner and Keller critic, Doug Petersen, called out the snarky replies, the APD account replied “Oh Doug. Nice to hear from you about harassment.”
While some may think the replies themselves are not totally inappropriate, they are coming from the official Albuquerque Police Department account – the same one we’re expected to rely on to learn about violent crimes in our community, and engage with the department.
That’s not lost on city councilors.
“It’s never acceptable as representatives, as elected officials and as representatives that are speaking on behalf of the city, we have to always take the higher road,” said City Councilor Renee Grout.
“It is hard to say that we should lead by example in this city full of crime when we can’t even hold our own employees to the same core values that APD is requiring to follow of all their employees, it’s truly embarrassing,” said City Councilor Brook Bassan.
If you’re wondering why city councilors are so upset about this, it’s because the same exact thing happened last year.
Last April, the official APD account posted things like “How is the crime in Tanoan?” and “Sounds like you’re blaming police.”
City councilors agreed it was a problem then, and they threatened to do something about it if it happened again.
“Let me make this clear I will work personally to defund that position, defund that account and prohibit the city from using Twitter in that way if we cannot solve this problem,” said former City Council President Pat Davis last year.
Davis is no longer a city councilor, but it’s clear the current councilors are still ready to follow through with that possibility.
“If we need to, we’ll change some funding, because it’s not OK. We can never talk like that. It’s not OK. We have to be better than that,” said Grout.
KOB 4 is still waiting to see if APD, or even the mayor’s office, will release a statement about these posts. But we did hear from the city’s chief administrative officer about this Wednesday night.
“I don’t have a statement about a personnel matter to be made here, and I won’t discuss that portion of it. But I also am not going to sit here and imply that this was a one-sided discussion, that there was only one individual involved,” said Dr. Samantha Sengel, the city’s chief administrative officer. “I think that public comments that imply that one individual was wrong in this case is misguided, and I think we all need to recognize there are multiple individuals engaged in this interaction.”
It’s worth noting APD’s own social media policy states it’s meant to protect the department from speech that could impair community trust. The department’s communications team has access to that social media account.
We reached out to confirm who made the posts, but haven’t heard back.
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