A former New Mexico State Police officer who has faced several lawsuits over his actions on the job is now fighting a three-year suspension of his law enforcement certification based on the Law Enforcement Academy board’s findings that he falsified his time card in 2020.
The board also found Nicholas Levine behaved in a way that reflected poorly on the department by wearing his uniform and driving his patrol vehicle to the home of a woman who was not his wife to pursue an inmate relationship, according to a July order.
Levine — who had worked for the department for about a decade before resigning in June 2021 — says in an August petition asking the state District Court in Santa Fe to reverse the ruling that the board’s decision was “arbitrary and capricious” and “not supported by substantial evidence.”
His attorney, Frederick Mower, declined to comment on the case.
A supervisor who reviewed Levine’s attendance records told the board a sampling of several months worth of records revealed Levine had claimed 78 hours of work at times during a 25-day period when he was at home in Santa Fe or elsewhere but should have been working in his assigned district, which includes Española and Taos.
According to transcripts from the Law Enforcement Academy board, Levine told board members he was not properly trained on how to track his “flex time” and work from home time and was actually working at the times cited.
In response to the allegation he wore his uniform and drove an agency vehicle to engage in an extramarital tryst with a woman, Levine told the board: “I did not have any sexual conduct or actions against her. … She made several actions toward myself. There was no sex ever.”
Levine told the board his marriage was on the rocks at the time and he was “not looking for anything explicit.”
“All I was frankly looking for was just to not feel miserable,” Levine is quoted as saying in the transcript, “to have a conversation with someone.”
Levine resigned from state police in June 2021 “pending an internal affairs investigation,” Lt. Mark Soriano said.
Court documents and previous reports indicate at least three New Mexico residents have sued Levine, alleging wrongdoing on the job. The state has paid more than $500,000 to settle those cases and spent more than $100,000 fighting them in court.
Pilar Murray, an attorney who represented an Española family who filed a civil rights claim against Levine in 2015, said she’s surprised it’s taken authorities this long to take official action against Levine, whom she described as a “loose canon” and “out of control .”
“I would have thought he would have been disciplined for excessive use of force,” Murray said. She represented four members of a family who claimed Levine used an electronic stun gun on three of them — including a man with diminished mental capacity — and shoved their 86-year-old grandmother to the ground, causing a broken arm.
The altercation occurred on the family’s property, according to court records. Levine had no probable cause to be there, trespassed on the family’s yard without a warrant, and provoked a confrontation with Richard Martinez, a man who had suffered a head injury as a child.
“Terrified and totally confused,” Murray wrote in the family’s lawsuit, “[Martinez] squirmed away and ran desperately towards the house. Defendant Levine followed, screaming and thrusting him up against a wall and shattering flower pots by the doorway. Dropping his taser… Levine pulled out his firearm and pointing it to [Martinez’s] head yelled ‘Do you want to die tonight?’ “
The family created a change.org petition at the time, asking people to support charging Levine with assault. The petition drew 78 signatures, according to the change.org website.
It does not appear Levine was ever criminally charged.
“As far as I know, he was never disciplined,” Murray said in a recent interview.
The state paid the family $90,000 to drop their lawsuit after spending about $94,000 fighting it in court, according to settlement documents and the state General Services Department.
An Alcalde man filed a lawsuit alleging civil rights violations against New Mexico State Police and Levine in 2011, claiming Levine entered the man’s home without probable cause or a warrant in 2010 and wrongfully arrested him on a baseless charge of assault on a household member.
Daniel Martinez’s grandmother had called the police and said she suspected he might harm himself with medication. The 25-year-old later said he only intended to take some aspirin, according to his complaint.
Martinez’s attorney told a local television station a video of the incident suggests Levine arrested Martinez as retaliation after the family’s Chihuahua nipped at him.
The state paid Martinez $20,000 to drop his claim, according to the Police1.com website.
In December 2020, the state paid a $432,000 settlement to a woman who said Levine hit her with his vehicle in 2020 while she was in a crosswalk outside the Sprouts grocery store on Zafarano Drive in Santa Fe.
“I was walking where I should have been walking … and all of a sudden, I noticed he started coming into my area,” Joyce G. Wiggins, who was 70 at the time of the incident, said in an interview.
“I was pushing my cart, and I turned my cart as if to try to run,” she said. “It seemed like he accelerated, and he knocked me down.”
Wiggins added, “He got out, and he never asked me how I was. He came over and started asking me, ‘What is your name?’ as if he was going to take a report. I said, ‘No, what’s your name?’ and that’s how we proceeded from there.”
While her lawsuit was pending, Wiggins said, Levine denied striking her with his vehicle.
Friends told her to continue with her lawsuit, she said, “but I didn’t want to take it any further because I could see there was that blue wall of silence, and I wasn’t going to get anywhere.”
While being deposed by the Law Enforcement Academy board, state police Capt. Clay Goret described the incident as “minor” and said he recalled “the pedestrian did not appear to have sustained any serious injuries.”
Wiggins said she suffered a tibial fracture and spent nearly four months in a wheelchair while recovering — first in the hospital and later in a medical rehabilitation center.
“It really left a sour taste in my mouth for the police force,” Wiggins said.
“Many people said I was very wrong for just settling the case, and I said: It’s going to catch up with him. … You can’t do wrong in this world and it not catch up to you,” she added.
The state spent $27,000 litigating the case before settling with Wiggins, according to General Services Department spokesman Thom Cole.
When asked for all settlements paid out in reference to cases filed against Levine, state police only listed the $90,000 settlement.
Levine — hired by state police in 2009 — had been written up for at least three traffic incidents involving police vehicles prior to the incident involving Wiggins, according to documents obtained by The New Mexican.
In 2010, he received a letter of reprimand for a “Class C” incident defined as an accident in which “the employee operated a departmental vehicle with obvious negligence which was the direct cause of the accident.”
Another letter of reprimand indicated he had been involved in two “Class B” accidents — defined as minor accidents in which an officer might not have been negligent but failed to exercise reasonable care. One was in July 2013 and another was in October 2013.
State police identified Levine in 2015 as one of five officers involved in a fatal shooting near Ruidoso of a Texas fugitive wanted on an outstanding warrant alleging sexual contact with a minor.
Murray, the attorney who represented the Española family who sued Levine, said she learned while researching his background he had attended the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly known as the School of the Americas, which she said has a reputation for teaching torture techniques .
Soriano wrote in an email he wasn’t authorized to release Levine’s résumé and directed a reporter to file a written request for the document through the state’s Inspection of Public Records Act.
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