11/25/13 10:26 PM CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names » The Return of the Albuquerque Death Squads » Print Page 1 of 5 http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/23/the-return-of-the-albuquerque-death-squads/print This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. NOVEMBER 23, 2011 Police War on the Poor The Return of the Albuquerque Death Squads by DAVID CORREIA Albuquerque. On November 13 of this year the Albuquerque police oversight commission cleared one of its own for the fatal shooting in September of 2010 of 19-year old Chandler Barr. The officer, a bicycle cop on her first day on the job, shot the mentally ill Barr twice in the chest after he threatened her with a butter knife. Barr is one of 20 young men shot by Albuquerque police in the last two years, and one of 14 dead from their injuries. The long list of young men—mostly Hispanic and many of them mentally ill or drug users—incudes also Dominic Robert Smith shot and killed on October 1, 2009 by an officer that, according to Margaret Ann Saiz, Robert’s mother, “said that my soon looked like he was mentally retarded.” Smith was behaving erratically and shoving pills in his mouth when an Albuquerque Police officer, using his favorite hunting rifle, fired a round into the unarmed man’s chest. In May of this year Mark Gomez found his brother Alan high on drugs and “acting crazy.” Not knowing how to intervene and scared that his brother would hurt himself, he called 911. Alan Gomez became another statistic when an APD officer shot him in the back. Gomez was armed at the time with a plastic spoon. On February 9, 2011, APD officer Trey Economidy pulled over Jacob Mitschelen on a traffic violation. Economidy claimed Mitschelen ran from the scene with a weapon in his hand. Mitschelen’s mother asked “They had him down with the first shot, why did they have to go up and pump two more shots in him?” One answer to the question, both the specific question regarding any one of the 14 deaths