The city of Tucumcari, New Mexico, and six of its cops recently were slapped with a lawsuit over a former fellow police officer who ended up in prison for torching a closed Route 66 motel and an abandoned house.
Courthouse News Service reports the plaintiffs allege nepotism and a lack of screening while hiring now-disgraced officer Dustin Lopez, who last year was sentenced to 4 1/2 years in prison for arson, breaking and entering, and conspiracy.
An accomplice, Robert Sandoval, was sentenced to 3 1/2 years on similar charges. The motel burned down in September 2014 was Payless Inns.
The hotel owners, Lawrence and Martha Phillip, say Lopez was hired because he was the nephew of a police sergeant, and that standard psychological testing — had it been administered before hiring — would have disqualified him for his history of alcoholism and mental disorders. […]
The Phillips say in the lawsuit that the city gave Lopez a free ride as a cop, ignoring his “drinking alcohol while on duty, insubordination, disorderly conduct, aiding and abetting a known felon to void arrest, aiding and abetting a probationer to avoid arrest for probation violation, and other conduct unbecoming a police officer.”
After violating its own nepotism policy by hiring him, the city and its police force enabled “a culture of indifference whereby supervisors and other officers came to ignore or not report the conduct of Officer Lopez, including investigating him for crimes,” the complaint states. […]
The Phillips seeks damages for negligence, negligent hiring and supervision, deliberate indifference and civil rights violations.
Courthouse News Service reports the lawsuit was filed Aug. 31 in Quay County in Tucumcari.
Payless Inns opened as the Sheraton Motor Inn in the late 1960s or early 1970s. It also was known as Taaj Hotels and Suites for a while. The Phllips family planned to renovate and reopen the motel. The structure was worth about $155,000 before the fire.
About the same time Lopez torched Payless Inns and the house, the old Tucumcari Motel in downtown burned down as well. Both suspects were implicated in that fire, but they apparently did not take responsibility for it in the plea deal.
The Tucumcari Motel wasn’t on Route 66, but sat on old U.S. 54 and was believed to be on an old Ozark Trail alignment. The century-old structure also previously was known as the Antler House, Palace Hotel and Oklahoma Rooms.
(Excerpted image of the ruins of the Payless Inn in Tucumcari via Google Street View)
Even if they win and hope they do, it still will not replace the nostalgia of the old place
It is bad enough cities and states destroy old sites without getting the help of someone like this