When I first heard about the sprawling corruption scandal that gutted the Albuquerque Police Department’s DWI unit in 2024, I, like a lot of people, assumed the specialized unit was finished. A decades-long bribery scheme involving nearly the entire squad, hundreds of dismissed cases, officers on the district attorney’s “Brady list” of untrustworthy cops, it seemed like the kind of institutional collapse you don’t recover from.
But, as a journalist, it’s my job to check. So imagine my surprise when APD’s latest numbers landed in my inbox this week.
Not only does APD still have a functioning DWI unit, but in 2025, with just four officers, they made more arrests than they did in 2024 when the scandal broke. Let that sink in: a skeleton crew working under the shadow of one of the worst corruption cases in department history somehow managed to be more effective than their predecessors.
In 2024, APD’s DWI unit started with seven officers, dropped to three, and limped to the finish line with four. They made 362 DWI arrests and conducted 20 checkpoints that yielded 55 arrests. Then in 2025, after losing two of their highest-producing officers to promotions, the remaining four officers made 395 arrests and ran 17 checkpoints that produced 59 arrests…