Farmington Officer Robert Shuttleworth’s DWI & child abuse charges secretly downgraded

A Farmington Officer who was charged with aggravated driving while intoxicated, and driving while intoxicated with minors in the vehicle had three of his charges downgraded and an open container charge disappeared before having to appear in court.

Have you ever wondered how cops are treated by the criminal just us system when they’re charged with the same types of crimes that private citizens are commonly charged with?

Here’s a breakdown of how two men were treated differently by law enforcement and district attorneys after being arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol with their kids in the car.

February 15, 2024, Farmington, New Mexico. Police Officer Robert Shuttleworth is off duty driving drunk with his two children in the car. With his 4-year-old girl, and his 3-year-old boy, Shuttleworth is about to wreck his Jeep.

A reporting party tells a deputy how he had to swerve to avoid being hit by Shuttleworth’s white Jeep Cherokee. While heading eastbound, Shuttleworth’s westbound Jeep almost struck the reporting party, crossed the median, and then struck a ditch.

Law enforcement from the sheriff’s office and police department show up to investigate. They recognize that Shuttleworth is intoxicated and then arrest him.

After transporting Farmington Officer Shuttleworth to San Juan County Adult Detention Center, Castillo collects some Intoxylizer breath samples. Shuttleworth blows a .27 and a .26, both of which qualify him for the charge of aggravated driving while intoxicated on alcohol.

Magically, the aggravated DWI charge gets changed to a regular DWI charge without any explanation that I could find in court documents.

Mysteriously, the two charges for child abuse that Deputy Castillo mentioned at the accident scene were downgraded from the felonies to misdemeanor driving while intoxicated with a minor in the vehicle by the time they were written into Castillo’s Probable Cause Statement.

Then, the child abuse charges were also downgraded to misdemeanors in Castillo’s Criminal Complaint.

Alarmingly, the charge of open container was left out of The Probable Cause Statement even though another deputy on scene pulled a partially-opened shooter of hard alcohol out of the passenger side floorboard of the Jeep and displayed it for Castillo’s body worn camera.

Furthermore, the open container charge was also left out of the Criminal Complaint that was filed in Magistrate Court.

To see a video version of this story, visit this link on my YouTube channel, and it will open in a new tab: https://youtu.be/vWDdT9QUsWc?si=zse5W2J3qbu5pcAS

Melvin Brownwolf incident

April 23, 2024, Farmington New Mexico. A private citizen named Melvin is driving around drunk with his girlfriend and his two children ages 8 and 3 years old. Melvin crashes into a gate in somebody’s yard, so his girlfriend calls the cops.

Melvin gets out of the car and flees to hide in an abandoned trailer nearby. The cops follow his footprints, find him, and take him back to the scene.

Melvin is then taken to Farmington Police Department where he takes a breath alcohol content test.

Melvin blows a .13 BrAC and a then a .11 BrAC. He’s then transported to San Juan County Detention Center where he’s booked on charges of two counts of child abuse, driving under the influence of alcohol, failure to give immediate notice of accidents, failure to notify owner upon striking fixture or property, failure to stop upon striking unattended vehicle, driving while license revoked, careless driving, and two counts of child not in restraint device or seat belt.

Farmington officer and private citizen charges displayed side by side

What’s similar about these two cases is that both suspects had children in the car at the time when they crashed while driving drunk.

What’s different about the outcome of these two similar cases is that the Farmington Police Officer had two of his charges magically downgraded in the Probable Cause Statement and an open container charge was left out of it altogether.

Additionally, the officer’s Aggravated DWI charge was secretively downgraded to a regular DWI charge prior to  his first court appearance.

This, while none of the private citizens charges were downgraded or removed from the Probable Cause Statement under the similar circumstances.

Farmington Officer DWI crash compared to private citizen’s

In comparing these two cases, we can see that after Officer Shuttleworth avoided Child Abuse charges in his case, a private citizen in a later case WAS charged with child abuse for doing the same thing.

While the Farmington officer with blue line privilege was only charged with the misdemeanor offenses of driving while intoxicated with a minor in the vehicle, the private citizen was charged with the felony offenses of Child Abuse. This, while the kids in the cars of both of the drunk driving suspects were of age to make Shuttleworth’s offense qualify for Child Abuse charges.

Tell me in the comments below why you think that the aggravated DWI charge and Child Abuse charge was downgraded for Shuttleworth before he was arraigned.

Misleading reporting about Shuttleworth’s charges

Newspaper articles published about the two cases in the Tri City Record failed to explain why the two suspects with similar circumstances were charged differently in the Probable Cause Statements and by employees working for the District Attorney’s Office.

In fact, when a reporter from Tri City Record questioned the Chief Deputy District Attorney Dustin O’Brien about why Shuttleworth was NOT charged with Child Abuse, O’Brien basically said that it was now a misdemeanor offense with some similar legal elements.

Here’s what O’Brien had to say about the incident, as was written into Reporter Debra Mayeux’s article about Officer Shuttleworth’s charges.

Before to 2019, a suspected drunken driver faced a charge of child abuse for having a child in the car, but the New Mexico State Legislature passed a new law making it a misdemeanor, if the child “does not suffer great bodily injury,” said Chief Deputy District Attorney Dustin O’Brien.

“We used to charge every DWI with a child in the car as child abuse,” O’Brien said. The 2019 law makes it a misdemeanor offense of driving while intoxicated with a minor in the vehicle, when the child is younger than 13.

However, if a child is 13 to 17 years old, it would be considered a felony child abuse charge. “We just stopped charging child abuse,” O’Brien said.

Unfortunately for the readers of Tri City Record, Reporter Debra Mayeux never fact checked Chief Deputy District Attorney O’Brien to see if his claims about the laws and their charging practices were accurate.

Keep in mind that it is very common for reporters in the corporate legacy media to rely heavily upon public officials for information in their stories, even if it’s inaccurate.

I was unable to reach anyone at the San Juan County District Attorney’s Office for comment on Officer Shuttleworth’s case.

Farmington Officer transitions to career at San Juan County Adult Detention Center

After Robert Shuttleworth lost his job at Farmington Police Department over his DWI incident, he got hired on at San Juan County Adult Detention Center.

Adam Howell is a writer who believes in free press and the importance of the constitution. He can be reached by clicking on this link to the contact page.