On January 9, Mayor Tim Keller announced that he has begun the process of selecting a new APD Chief to replace former APD Chief Harold Medina. Under the city charter, the Mayor appoints the APD Chief and the appointment must be approved by the Albuquerque City Council.
Chief Medina retired on December 31, 2025 after three decades in law enforcement. Medina was appointed by Mayor Keller APD Chief and served as Chief since September 2021.
On December 31, in a New Year’s Eve news release, Mayor Keller announced his appointment of APD Deputy Chief Cecily Barker as Interim APD Chief. Cecily Barker has been with APD over 20 years and has come up through the ranks. It is being reported she has expressed interest in applying for the position to be made permanent but has yet to apply.
PUBLIC SECTOR SEARCH & CONSULTING INC
The city has hired the outside firm Public Sector Search & Consulting Inc., to assist in the search and selection process for a new APD Chief. The firm specializes in police executive searches and has aided dozens of large law enforcement agencies, including those in Chicago and Dallas. The city has used the firm in the past, including for the search and selection of Deputy APD Chief.
According to its web site, Public Sector Search & Consulting holds itself out as a “boutique executive” search firm that serves a limited number of clients and emphasizes a higher level of responsiveness. It is an executive staff search firm that focuses exclusively on recruiting police executives. The firms recruiters are former police chiefs who have extensive knowledge and expertise in both contemporary policing and recruiting practices. The firm proclaims its understanding of the candidate pool is unrivaled and that every new search it conducts relies on their vast network of police leaders.
The link to their web site is here:
According to the city of Albuquerque’s public records website, the firm’s contract began January 2 and has a maximum limit of $100,000. Applications are already being submitted. According to APD spokesperson Gilbert Gallegos, as of January 8, six people have applied for APD Chief.
Gallegos said there was no firm timeline for announcing the next selection, but he expects the process to move faster than when Chief Medina was chosen. When former APD chief Michael Geier announced he was retiring in 2020, it took Mayor Keller upwards of six months to choose Medina as Geier’s permanent replacement even though Medina had been serving as Interim Chief.
According to a news release, community input sessions will be scheduled so residents, advocates, organizations and businesses can “identify the leadership qualities, experience and priorities desired in the next chief of police,” the release states. Residents will also be able to take a community survey to “ensure broad and meaningful input. “
Mayor Tim Keller said this in a January 8 news release:
“We are in a very different environment now that we completed our reform efforts with the Department of Justice; our crime-fighting strategies are working, and we are attracting more officers. … We also know the community is still concerned about safety. We have an opportunity to choose a police chief who will rise to meet today’s challenges, like the proliferation of fentanyl and long-standing cracks in the criminal justice system.”
Links to quoted or relied upon news sources are here:
https://www.koat.com/article/albuquerque-process-select-new-police-chief/69961764
https://www.abqjournal.com/news/albuquerque-launches-search-for-new-police-chief/2956953
https://abqraw.com/post/100000-city-contract-awarded-to-find-next-police-chief/
HOW LONG WILL KELLER TAKE?
On December 9, Mayor Keller was elected to a third 4 year term and he must now find a person who will be his third APD Chief. The process could take mere weeks or months. Mayor Keller said this about the process of selecting a new chief:
“You either early on, find somebody and you really want to go with, and then it goes fast. Let’s say three months. … Or you’ve got four or five people that you like, and so you really got to vet them and interview them and get lots of input. Then it pushes it out to, like, nine months.”
Mayor Keller said the long process will be all an effort to find someone who “checks every box.” That includes understanding Albuquerque and the challenges the city faces. The main priority, however, is keeping crime on a downward trend. Keller said this:
“Harold started that process [of keeping crime on a downward trend] , and it has been achieved through technology, through the use of civilians, and through much stronger investigative work. So we want the new chief to be able to build on those, but also come in with some new ideas. … We know we got to look around. … It could be national, in a sense of from another city, but maybe it’s also local. You know, maybe there’s state police or someone from Las Cruces.”
COMMENTARY AND ANALYIS
Mayor Tim Keller’s appointment of Cecily Barker as APD Interim Chief came as absolutely no surprise to APD watchers and city hall insiders. Her appointment was 100% expected. Former APD Chief Harold Medina advocated for one of his appointed Deputy Chief’s to take his place saying “I hope that I left a strong bench for mayor to look at and choose.”
Confidential sources have confirmed that former APD Chief Harold Medina had been grooming Deputy Chief Cecily Barker to be his replacement as Chief for some time. The same sources have said that Mayor Keller has been “champing at the bit” to appoint the first female APD Chief in the city’s history as he has done with the appointment of Fire Chief Emily Jaramillo.
It has been reported that Interim Chief Cecily Barker is interested in being made permanent and that she will apply. Such a scenario has happened before. Mayor Keller has proclaimed in the past there will be a national search for a new chief, which is identical to what he said when he fired former APD Chief Geier and eventually appointed APD Chief Harold Medina, who Keller had appointed Interim Chief.
The selection process used by Keller that ultimately resulted in the appointment of Chief Harold Medina was considered by many a politcal sham. Once Medina applied to be appointed Chief, it was a forgone conclusion that Keller would appoint him Chief. The blunt reality is that APD sworn police and in particular the APD Union will resist anyone from outside of APD.
APD NEEDS COMPLETELY NEW LEADERSHIP AND REORGANIZATION
The Albuquerque Police Department employs 1,880 full time employees which includes more than 950 sworn police officers. APD has an annual approved budget of $271.5 million dollars. APD employs upwards of 20% of all city hall employees and has the largest budget of all the 27 departments. It is because of the department’s sure size that a strong management team is needed and not just a Chief.
APD is a train wreck. It is top heavy with mid-management and plagued by a DWI dismissal scandal. Keller needs to appoint a new APD Chief and Deputy Chiefs and not just Medina loyalists or cronies. Mayor Keller needs to replace the entire Chief’s command staff and completely reorganize the department for a new generation of leadership.
APD cannot deal with the city’s high crime rates because APD’s sworn personnel is at 950. For the last 10 years, recruitment has been stagnant and the department has not been able to keep up with retirements despite being the best paid law enforcement department in the state. As it stands, there are only 350 out of 950 sworn police assigned to the six area commands, broken down into 3 shifts and patrolling the streets responding the hundreds of thousands of calls for service a year.
Simply put, APD needs far more than one new Chief. It needs a whole new generation and management team of top command staff of Chief and Deputy Chiefs who need to come from outside of APD. If the entire command staff that Chief Medina has put in place over the last 5 years is not replaced, including all the Deputy Chiefs, there is little to no chance APD will change. APD will revert back to the old ways that brought on the Department of Justice (DOJ) consent decree that lasted for 10 years with the city paying millions of taxpayer dollars to institute constitutional policing practices.
The award of a contract to Public Sector Search & Consulting Inc. is a good start and ostensibly signals that a national search for a new APD Chief will happen. But the work of Public Sector Search & Consulting Inc. must be expanded to include a search for a whole new management team consisting of one Chief and 2 or perhaps 3 Deputy Chiefs that a new chief can bring with them, trust and rely upon.
Hope springs eternal that Mayor Tim Keller will in fact do a national search for a new APD Chief and Deputy Chiefs and that the search is not a political sham to replace Harold Medina and not simply meant to appoint a Medina crony who will continue with his management policies and archaic management style.