City of Albuquerque pays out hundreds of thousands of dollars in crash settlements
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – A new report shows the City of Albuquerque shelled out more than $3 million to settle lawsuits in the last three months of 2023. About a quarter of that went to people who were in crashes caused by city workers including Albuquerque Police Department officers.
A trip to the landfill took a turn in 2020 when a worker backed heavy equipment into a customer’s truck and totaled it according to a lawsuit filed by the customer. They accepted a settlement from the city of more than $200,000.
Story continues below
Trending: Airbnb opens replica ‘Up’ house for stays in Abiquiu
Entertainment: Woman from Albuquerque wins on ‘Jeopardy!’
It’s similar to an incident the year before at the Eagle Rock Convenience Center where a worker also backed into a customer and the city also agreed to a $200,000 payout.
Another crash in 2019 involved an Animal Welfare worker who made an illegal u-turn according to the lawsuit and slammed into a couple’s car causing serious injuries which was settled for $300,000.
The city also paid out for crashes caused by police officers on patrol. One involved a name already in the news, former APD Officer Kenneth Skeens who is facing criminal charges for dragging a disabled man out of a Target.
A year before Skeens was fired for that incident, Skeens rear-ended a family on I-40 causing a three-car pileup. That payout was $40,000.
In another case, the city paid out $75,000 after Officer Zachary Herbst swerved into a motorcycle on Central leaving the driver with a punctured lung.
The quarterly report also lists payouts for trip and fall cases, discrimination, whistleblower lawsuits, and failures to fulfill public records requests. More than $400,000 went to Gabriel Garcia who was shot after throwing rocks at an APD officer in 2022. The officer who shot and wounded Garcia, Officer Quan La, was fired over the shooting. Garcia pled guilty to resisting an officer.
