Albuquerque police (Creative Commons).

Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez said investigators will try to determine whether police officers practiced excessive force in violation of federal laws and constitutional rights, CNN reported.

Police Chief Ray Schultz said his department had been cooperating with federal investigators for about a year in the “informal inquiry” into the police department, according to CNN.

“When we first noticed an increased number of police/citizen interactions resulting in force it was the men and women of APD who immediately began identifying ways to improve the quality of police services that we deliver,” Schultz said in 2010. “Their recommendations, along with 39 additional ones from the Police Executive Research Forum, were adopted, and to date, over 92 percent have been implemented.”

According to the AP, the city has experienced 25 officer-involved shootings since 2010. Seventeen of them have been fatal.

A number of high-profile cases alleging excessive force by officers have brought lawsuits, protests and demands for an agency overhaul from civil rights advocates, the AP reported. Some cases were caught on video.

From the AP:

One video showed officers giving each other celebratory "belly bumps" after beating a suspected car thief in a parking garage. Another clip showed an officer illegally entering an apartment and using a stun gun on one suspect, then punching another suspect after he had surrendered.

The department also changed its social media policy involving officers after a detective shot and killed a man last year and listed his occupation as "human waste disposal" on his Facebook page. The detective was later suspended and transferred out of the department's gang unit to field services.

“Our investigation will include a thorough review of APD's policies and practices,” Perez said, “as well as outreach to the community and other stakeholders, to identify root causes of misconduct if we discover that there have been systemic violations of the law."

Reach Executive Producer Agnus Dei Farrant here.