Judge Awards $6 Million After APD Detectives Shot Man With Schizophrenia in His Own Backyard

In April 2011, two Albuquerque Police Department detectives drove to the Torres family home to serve Christopher Torres with an arrest warrant for a road rage incident. Christopher was 27 years old and had schizophrenia. APD had assigned him a dedicated Crisis Intervention Team officer specifically to handle exactly this kind of situation. The detectives, C.J. Brown and Richard Hilger, went in street clothes. They did not contact the Crisis Intervention officer. They did not reach out to the family before approaching. When nobody answered the front door, they hopped the backyard fence.

Christopher was in the yard with his dog, wearing pajamas, holding a broomstick. His parents say he put it down when the detectives approached. What happened next, the officers and the family described very differently. Brown and Hilger claimed Christopher grabbed Hilger's hidden holster gun and threatened them with it. Christopher's father, Stephen Torres, and the physical evidence told a different story.

Randi McGinn and Kathy Love of McGinn Montoya Love and Curry took the wrongful death case to a state bench trial before District Court Judge Shannon Bacon. At the heart of the case was the officers' account of the gun grab. In her 20-page ruling issued June 10, 2014, Judge Bacon concluded there was 'no credible evidence that Christopher Torres grabbed Detective Hilger's gun out of the hidden, inside-the-pants holster, held it in a firing position and threatened either of the Detectives.' She found the detectives' testimony not credible.

The judge's findings went beyond the gun-grab question. She wrote that the detectives themselves created the danger: their failure to contact the Crisis Intervention officer, their failure to present the warrant, and their decision to jump the fence and confront a mentally ill man without warning or backup amounted to an unnecessary escalation that caused his death. Detective Brown shot Christopher Torres three times in the back. Hilger beat him. Judge Bacon found both committed battery, and that the deadly force violated Torres' constitutional rights.

Judge Bacon awarded more than $6 million in wrongful death damages. Under New Mexico's Tort Claims Act, the state cap limited the city's immediate payment from the state judgment to $400,000. The family was also pursuing a parallel federal civil rights lawsuit. In May 2015, the Torres family settled all remaining litigation, ending the case. Stephen Torres said the family had achieved what they wanted from the start: 'setting the record straight.' Both detectives remained on the force after the ruling.