New Mexico State Police officers arrested an Abiquiú man following a traffic stop for allegedly hitting an officer with his car door and resisting attempts to be handcuffed.
Officer Frank Martinez arrested Anthony Hicks, 66, on Feb. 21 for not using a turn signal, failure to maintain a traffic lane, resisting an officer and two counts of battery on an officer.
Battery on a police officer is a fourth-degree felony with a maximum sentence of 18 months. All of the other charges are misdemeanors or traffic violations.
Martinez wrote in a criminal complaint that he was driving on U.S. Highway 84/285 around 7 p.m. with his field training officer Marcus Lopez, when they spotted Hicks’s Ford Ranger crossing the fog line multiple times and not using a turn signal when he changed lanes.
Lopez turned on the lights and siren and they stopped Hicks’s truck, Martinez wrote.
After Martinez told Hicks why he pulled him over, Hicks allegedly talked over them and told Lopez that he “better not be threatening me” as he looked at his center console, next to a firearm, Martinez wrote.
Lopez had Hicks get out of the truck, and the man asked why and the allegedly pushed his driver door open “in an aggressive manner and struck me with his door,” Martinez wrote.
Hicks then walked to the front of the patrol vehicle and while Martinez did a pat-search, Hicks allegedly placed his left elbow on Martinez’s chest, trying to push him away, and Martinez then tried to handcuff him, but Hicks “tensed both of his arms” and grabbed the front bumper, telling the officers that he was not going to jail, Martinez wrote.
A third officer who was on the scene, along with Lopez and Martinez, “removed” Hicks’s hands from the bumper and tried to handcuff him behind his back, but he kept pulling his arms away, until they handcuffed him after “multiple efforts,” Martinez wrote.
Martinez filed the court paperwork the following day but Hicks was not arraigned until Feb. 24. Rio Arriba Magistrate Judge Alexandra Naranjo released him on his own recognizance.
A status conference was set for March 26.