Ex-City Cop Won't Be Retried on Sex Charge

Journal Staff Report

Bernalillo County prosecutors say they will not seek a retrial for a former Albuquerque police sergeant charged in 2001 with molesting a child.
Mike Garcia, 47, was tried last month, but the jury deadlocked on the most serious charge of criminal sexual contact with a minor. Jurors voted 11-1 in favor of acquittal.
Jurors acquitted Garcia on a lesser charge of tampering with evidence.
Deputy District Attorney Lisa Trabaudo this week filed papers to drop the sexual contact charge against Garcia, saying the victim in the case did not want a retrial.
Mary Han, Garcia's attorney, applauded Trabaudo's decision Thursday.
"I know the district attorney is not going to regret doing this," Han said. "I'm grateful that Lisa Trabaudo made the right decision."
Garcia, an 18-year veteran of the force, had been a supervisor of APD's school resource officer program.
He was fired in October 2001 shortly after he was indicted by a Bernalillo grand jury for inappropriately touching a 12-year-old girl who was staying at his family's Albuquerque home. He was fired less than two years before retirement.