APD: Video stings cop in hooker case

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - It's the hotel room video that did in an Albuquerque cop, as he offers help to what he thinks is a prostitute in exchange for sex.

The video has a lot of adult subject matter.

At times the video seems innocent enough; two people talking about their favorite TV shows, past relationships. But then things turn sexual, and the cop puts himself in a very compromising position.

Now-former Albuquerque Police Department Officer Matt Kindle was looking for sex when he entered a hotel room near Interstate 40 and Carlisle Boulevard NE in August.

“It's my lunch so I have time to chitchat,” Kindle can be heard saying on the video.

He's on duty and in uniform. The woman is a confidential informant posing as a prostitute.

Kindle had been talking on the phone to a prostitute who'd left town. He offered to help get her out of a criminal case if she'd come back to town and meet him.

Instead she called the cops, and APD pulled a bait-and-switch, replacing the real hooker with the informant to set Kindle up

Back in the camera-rigged room Kindle even mentions that she doesn't seem like the woman he'd heard about.

“Heather said you were really skinny when you left?” Kindle said to the woman. “Have you been gone fricken, I mean I am not saying you're fat, I am just saying you don't look skinny.”

The informant plays it off and chats with Kindle for nearly an hour. During their talk Kindle makes it clear he's looking for a mutually beneficial agreement.

He then gives the woman tips about how to avoid a police sting while working as an Internet escort.

As his lunch hour comes to an end Kindle calls in to dispatch and goes back on the clock but stays in the room with the woman and things heat up. They talk about having sex.

“We haven't agreed to do anything for money so I wouldn't get in trouble,” said Kindle.

He then exposes himself and plays with himself. That's when vice cops watching the whole thing intervene by calling the informant. That gives the informant an excuse to get out of the room.

Kindle waits 10 minutes then leaves in himself.

Kindle was arrested that day and eventually charged with bribery, extortion, patronizing a prostitute and attempted rape for what happened in that hotel room. He was fired from APD a few weeks after the arrest.
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The trouble for Kindle just got a lot deeper. Thursday he was also indicted on bribery and pimping charges from an unrelated case, charges that sources said are connected to the Private Ice prostitution ring from a few years ago.