Posted on 02/27/2025 7:14:59 PM PST by Morgana
For nearly 30 years, Albuquerque attorney Thomas Clear III says he led a criminal racketeering enterprise that paid off generations of law enforcement officers to get his clients’ DWI cases thrown out.
The admission came Wednesday as the 67-year-old Clear, at an unannounced hearing in U.S. Magistrate Court, pleaded guilty to bribery of Albuquerque Police Department officers, racketeering conspiracy, aiding and abetting, and interference with commerce by extortion. A sentencing date hasn’t been set.
“Today, Thomas J. Clear III admitted to leading a decades-old criminal enterprise wherein he abandoned his own ethical duties as a lawyer, corrupted generations of law enforcement officers, and perverted the criminal justice system in order to feed his own greed,” U.S. Attorney for New Mexico Alexander Uballez said in a statement to the Journal. “With this conviction, we end this ignominious scheme that has shaken the faith of all New Mexicans. But we are not done digging. Now is the time to come clean — if you were ever involved in this deceit, now is the time to come to the table.”
While Clear was the fourth defendant to take a plea in recent weeks — following his former investigator and two former APD DWI officers — his account that the scheme went as far back as the mid ‘90s is new and raises more questions than it answers.
APD’s sprawling Internal Affairs probe has traced the alleged corruption to about 2003. Another major participant who has pleaded guilty, Ricardo “Rick” Mendez, admitted going to work for Clear in 2007 and helping in the scheme beginning in 2008.
(Excerpt) Read more at abqjournal.com ...
Like I said, who knew that a rabid warmonger would also be a viscous “law and order” nutjob?
Could it have anything to do with NM politics?
NM has been a democrat run State for quite some time.
Probably neglected to give Governorlissima Lujan ‘her 10%’.
Just weird, a made up insult totally unrelated to the thread and a nasty and passionate defense of this decades of cop bribing and fixing cases.
You are a totalitarian Zeeper and a worshiper of police state power. How hard is that for you to understand?
LOL, you really are drunk and raving nonsense.
Lay off the stalking and taking your grudges to various threads.
ping
Cops are there to deal with people that have broken the Law.
Military is there to prevent harm to people and deal with it harshly if they ignore that warning.
Very subtle difference.
Cops aren’t there to control your actions, just remind you of the bad things that can happen if you fu$k with other people.
Military is there there to stop you before you hurt others.
Me driving 65 in a 55 MPH zone isn’t going to kill anybody.
Unless something goes horribly wrong. Cop stuff optional reaction.
Someone emptying an AK47 into a crowd on people is Military
mandatory reaction.
I would add Southland and Justified to list.
I did enjoy Justified, got interested because it had a lot of the Deadwood cast making appearances with the star Timothy Olyphant. Southland was interesting to watch too. Regina King was in that, and I just rewatched the HBO Max version of Watchmen where she played the lead. That was I think just an 8 part miniseries but also excellent.
Oh and in Justified, Joelle Carter was soft on the eyes, and Walton Goggins pretty much stole the show. If I recall correctly I heard an interview where they said Goggins was originally only cast for a few episodes as Carter’s former love interest but he did such a great job they decided to write him into the entire series. His career really took off since though I know his first big break was in the supporting cast of one of those cop shows I never saw.
Yep
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.