Panel to review officer-involved shooting

CLOVIS — In the “Policies and Procedures” of the Clovis Police Department, the chapter on “Use of Force & Firearms” occupies 13 pages, only one of which deals directly with the “Use of Deadly Force.”

That section draws straight from the New Mexico State Statute on “justifiable homicide by public officer or public employee.” It’s likely what a panel of district attorneys will consider sometime next month when they review the case file on the Oct. 8 deadly force incident in Clovis.

Clovis Police Officer Brent Aguilar returned to work on Monday, within a week of shooting a fleeing criminal suspect dead just south of the Prince Street overpass. Aaron Joseph Chavez, 22, was a suspect in a stolen vehicle investigation that turned into a foot pursuit after he abandoned the car outside a gas station just after midnight.

CPD Chief Doug Ford told The News on Tuesday that Aguilar and another officer, Sgt. Dagoberto Rodriguez, arrived to the scene in separate vehicles during the pursuit. Ford referred additional questions to New Mexico State Police, which is still investigating the incident and has only released a few details.

Aguilar told NMSP that he saw Rodriguez fall during the foot pursuit and yell “He (Chavez) has something in his hands.”

Aguilar then said he saw Chavez remove his right hand from his right pocket and started swinging “an object which Officer Aguilar perceived to be a knife,” according to the latest NMSP update.

“Officer Aguilar stopped abruptly fearful Chavez might cut his face and/or throat, and discharged his duty weapon, firing four rounds fatally striking Chavez.”

Investigators found “a chain saw blade fashioned into a weapon” lying beside Chavez.

Last week, District Attorney Andrea Reeb said the main question on matters of officer-involved deadly force incidents is if a reasonable officer in that situation would perceive a threat of great bodily harm or death. The CPD policies and the state statute echo that point, stating directly that “homicide is necessarily committed when a public officer or public employee has probable cause to believe he or another is threatened with serious harm or deadly force.”

Deadly force is defined as “any use of force that is reasonably likely to cause death.”

The DA panel reviewing the completed investigation will have more information when it sets to determine if criminal charges should be pursued. The panel could have lapel video footage, dash-cam footage, autopsy results and ballistics reports. The panel would also likely consider details such as where Chavez stood in relation to Aguilar, and where he was shot.

NMSP has not released any of those details yet. On Friday, it formally denied The Eastern New Mexico News request for records associated with the shooting.

The newspaper request was denied in part because records “reveal confidential sources, methods, information or individuals accused but not charged with a crime.”

Aguilar is the son of Reeb’s lead investigator, Dan Aguilar, but Reeb said the DA panel reviewing the case will consist of “three people that do not know anything about this jurisdiction, anything about this police officer,” and that she won’t be advising them or giving opinions.

“I’m told (NMSP) will have the entire case filed and ready for the office on November 7th,” Reeb said on Thursday. But it can still take an average of six months for a decision, she added.

Ford said this is the first time since 1986 that a CPD officer killed a suspect in a deadly force incident. In that case it was a domestic violence situation in which the suspect threatened the officer with a gun while using an end-table for an improvised shield, Ford said.

Reeb declined to comment on the specifics of this case, particularly since it’s still an ongoing investigation. Speaking generally to the process, however, she stated “you hope and assume that most of the time, officers, when they shoot somebody, they’ve been trained and it is a justifiable shooting. But that’s not always the case.”