ALBUQUERQUE Early on the morning of Aug. 24, 2016, two Albuquerque police officers responded to a 911 call at an apartment complex on the citys west side. Inside, they found the remains of fourth-grader Victoria Martens wrapped in a smoldering blanket. She had been given alcohol and methamphetamine before she was sexually assaulted, strangled, stabbed and then dismembered. It was her 10th birthday.

Victorias mother, Michelle, her mothers boyfriend and the boyfriends cousin were arrested at the scene and charged in the girls murder. Only later did it come to light that New Mexicos Children, Youth and Families Department had forwarded a complaint related to Victoria Martens to the Albuquerque Police Department five months before her death. Victoria had told a family friend that her mothers boyfriend had tried to kiss her a different man than the one charged in the girls death and the friend called CYFD.

The police received the referral, but did not follow up. When a reporter from the Albuquerque Journal, the citys morning newspaper, inquired about it, two APD spokespeople said officers had interviewed Victoria and her mother but found no cause for further investigation. In reality, they had ignored the referral entirely.

If theyd actually looked into it, they might have learned that Michelle Martens had previously trawled the internet looking for men to engage in sexual acts with her children. A subsequent civilian oversight board investigation found that the APD officials had lied to the press and to the public about the case and once they were caught in their lie, Police Chief Gorden Eden rejected the boards recommendation that one of his officers be suspended for 80 hours for violating the publics trust.

The handling of the Martens case fit a broader pattern of troubling behavior among APD command staff. The department has been under a reform agreement with the Department of Justice since 2014, after an investigation following a string of controversial police killings found the department had violated the U.S. Constitution and demonstrated patterns of excessive force.

The DOJ agreement called for changes to the departments policies on use of force, training and transparency, as well ongoing review by civilian panels and an independent monitor. But the APD has repeatedly failed to comply with reforms. A court-appointed independent monitor, James Ginger, has filed five reports with the judge overseeing the case, each one ripping APD for its obstruction. The most recent report , filed in May, accused APD of being in deliberate noncompliance.

There seems to be no one person, unit, or group with responsibility and command authority to make change happen, wrote Ginger.

Federal consent decrees and civilian oversight are often held up as strong tools to get misbehaving police departments to right ship. But Albuquerques experience shows the agreements can be toothless and fragile they dont work without the cooperation of the police and, perhaps more important, city government. Its been more than three years since the agreement was signed, and oversight officials and community activists say the departments leaders remain accountable to no one.