Over 3 years ago on September 23, 2021, Mayor Tim Keller and his Administration concluded a series of meetings with law enforcement and community partners to address what all participants called the “broken criminal justice” system. A total of 5 meetings were conducted over 2 months. The participants included the Governor’s office, the Attorney General’s office, the District Attorney’s office, the Chief Public Defender’s office, Senate and House members, the Albuquerque City Council, the Bernalillo County Commission, the Bernalillo County Sheriff, the Albuquerque Police Department, the New Mexico State Police and the Metro and District Courts and many others.
The program consisted of 5 sessions, each lasting upwards of two hours. Panel discussions with law enforcement, court officials, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and representatives from higher education addressed opportunities for early intervention, detention, diversion and hearings, resources for victims’ advocates and offender reentry, and career pipelines. The conference was dubbed the “Metro Crime Initiative” (MCI) and created legislative priorities and action items for the criminal justice system to be presented to the New Mexico legislature.
MCI MAJOR CATEGORIES AND PRIORITY ACTION ITEMS
On December 11, 2024 Mayor Tim Keller distributed to the general public a flyer with a complete listing of 50 specific action items identified by the MCI. There are 5 major categories and priority action items outlined in the 2025 Metro Crime Initiative with a total of 50 action items to be accomplished with the New Mexico legislature. The flyer is identified as Metro Crime Initiative 2025, “Action and investments that we can make to fight crime in Albuquerque” and it lists those items the city wants the 2025 New Mexico Legislature to address. The flyer identifies the action items completed and partially completed. Only 5 actions items have been completed and only 3 action items have been partially addressed during past legislative sessions. An astonishing 42 Action items remain to be completed and addressed by the New Mexico legislature.
The links to review the flyer released by Mayor Keller is here:
https://www.cabq.gov/mayor/documents/mci-bifold-2024.pdf
THE FAILURES AND SUCCESSES OF KELLER’S METRO CRIME INITIATIVE
This article is an in depth report on the MCI’s 50 action items identifying the 5 action items accomplished, the 3 action items partially accomplished and identifying the 42 action items not accomplished by the Albuquerque Metro Crime Initiative and what the city will pursue during the 2025 legislative session.
- REDUCE GUN VIOLENCE
Not one of the following 10 action items are marked as as “completed” in past legislative sessions:
- Stronger penalties for possessing firearms in drug distribution crimes.
- New charges for firing off a gun in public.
- New charges for carrying a firearm while intoxicated.
- Close loopholes in Reg Flag law.
- Fund the New Mexico Office of Gun Violence Prevention.
- Expand the ACS’s Violence Intervention Program (VIP) to all high schools.
- Remove the preemption on cities from addressing assault rifle proliferation.
- Add federal prosecutors to New Mexico, addressing gun and drug-related offenses.
- Implement “Duke City Stats,” to other jurisdictions in crime strategy and tracking.
- Requesting increased state penalties for Felon in Possession to reduce gun violence and enhance public safety
- BOLSTER COURTS TO CLOSE THE REVOLVING DOOR
Not one of the following 16 action items are marked as as “completed” in the BOLSTER COURTS TO CLOSE THE REVOLVING DOOR category in past legislative sessions:
- Establish a dedicated “fentanyl court.”
- Establish a fentanyl specific response team.
- Continued improvement to the pretrial detention system.
- More jail time for retail theft offenders who brandish a gun during a crime.
- Enhance domestic violence penalties and breadth of laws.
- Expand addiction programs with emphasis on fentanyl treatment.
- Capital funding for facility improvements at the Family Advocacy Center.
- Fund peer support programs for crime victims.
- Incentivize new provider services.
- Expand treatment programs for mental/behavioral health problems.
- Establish immediate options for behavioral health and addiction services as an alternative to jail time.
- Career training in behavioral health for underserved youth.
- Contract to transport inmates to jail.
- Establish security branch to monitor prisoners while at UNMH.
- Develop behavioral health training/ career path programs.
- Establish and fund a community victim’s ombudsman.
The following 2 action items are marked as “completed” in past legislative sessions in the BOLSTER COURTS TO CLOSE THE REVOLVING DOOR category:
- Longer sentences for 2nd degree murder.
- Designate 2nd degree homicide by vehicle to a serious violent offense.
- FIGHT CRIME
Not one of the following 7 action items are marked as “completed” under the category FIGHT CRIME in past legislative sessions:
- State funding and direct participation in warrant backlog initiative.
- Enact stricter street racing penalties.
- Common sense regulations on large capacity magazines and bump stocks.
- Fix “asset forfeiture” law to increase funding for public education & support drug trafficking investigations Funding for regular presence of New Mexico State Police (NMSP) in Albuquerque with a traffic unit to patrol highways and dedicated narcotics and auto theft investigators.
- Enhance criminal sentencing for road rage and violent crimes on the roadways.
- Prioritize enforcement efforts against drug trafficking and distribution networks.
- Extend the referendum on violent juvenile diversion programs. o Increase penalties for reckless driving crashes involving speeding that cause death or great bodily harm.
Only the 1 action item is marked as “completed” under the category FIGHT CRIME in past legislative sessions:
- Introduce temporary “return to work” legislation to allow qualified/certified officers to return to duty.
- FUND CRIME FIGHTING TECHNOLOGY AND INFRASTRUCTURE
Not one of the following 3 action items are marked as “completed” under the category FUND CRIME FIGHTING TECHNOLOGY AND INFRASTRUCTURE in past legislative sessions:
- Fund community command posts on Albuquerque’s east and west side.
- Secure funding for the jail to quickly process individuals taken into custody and provide constitutional detention.
- Increase funding for violent crime investigative units to expand resources
The following 2 action items are marked as “completed” under the category FUND CRIME FIGHTING TECHNOLOGY AND INFRASTRUCTURE in past legislative sessions:
- $6.5 million helicopter & help from NMSP to patrol when APD’s helicopter is unavailable.
- Increase speed detection devices to monitor and enforce speed limits throughout all roads within ABQ.
The following 3 actions items are marked as partially addressed under the category FUND CRIME FIGHTING TECHNOLOGY AND INFRASTRUCTURE in past legislative sessions:
- $10 million to expand gunshot detection technology.
- $10 million for two additional police substations in high crime areas.
- $20 million expansion of the Real Time Crime Center, and $10 million in new cameras to help with investigations.
- STRENGTHEN COLLABORATIONS AND PROCEDURES
Not one of the following 11 action items are marked as “completed” under the category STRENGTHEN COLLABORATIONS AND PROCEDURES in past legislative sessions:
- Establish medical check protocols between UNM Hospital and Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC).
- Notify law enforcement when offenders are deemed incompetent by the courts.
- Require parole/probation officers to notify police and victims when off enders are released.
- Fund broader specialty courts to address homelessness, addiction, and mental health cases. o Improvements to conservatorship programs for severely addicted.
- Work with Bernalillo County to identify and resolve bottlenecks when individuals are taken to jail. o Create a specialty court for auto theft.
- Mandate that prosecutors utilize habitual off ender enhancements.
- Require use of statewide database for fi rearm prohibitions.
- Enable mental health providers to report individuals under their care to the National Instant Criminal Check system.
- Requesting a statewide Multi-Agency Task Force to investigate offi cer-involved shootings for transparency and community trust.
- Increase Retention of law enforcement by expanding tax credit opportunities.
- Seeking mandatory mental health checks for individuals purchasing assault rifles.
COMMENTARY AND ANALYIS
It’s painfully obvious that Mayor Tim Keller’s and the City of Albuquerque’s influence with the New Mexico legislature is essentially nonexistent given the extent of failure involved with the MCI priorities and action items he touts as solutions to the city’s high crime rates. This is a failure coming from a former New Mexico State Senator who represented the International District, a former New Mexico State Auditor and now the Mayor of the largest city in the state. After over 3 years of trying to deal with the New Mexico legislature and with only 5 items completed, 3 partially addressed and 42 remaining of MCI’s 50 priorities and action items, it’s a safe bet that Mayor Tim Keller is not going to get much done in convincing the 2025 New Mexico legislature to get behind the 42 MCI action items and priorities that are left and that Keller wants.
The criminal justice system in this country and for that matter in New Mexico has never been perfect, nor will it ever be, but it is not broken as Mayor Tim Keller and his “Metro Crime Initiative” participants would have every one believe. Yes, the criminal justice system does have its flaws and a number of inequities, but to say that it is a broken system is just plain political opportunism at its worst or sure ignorance of the criminal justice system itself and how it works.
Imbedded in our constitution is how justice is served, to ensure and to protect all of our constitutional rights of presumption of innocence, due process of law and requiring convictions based on evidence. The cornerstone of our criminal justice system is requiring prosecutors to prove that a person is “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt” before a jury and in a court of law.
The 3 major stakeholders in our criminal justice system that are always signaled out when it’s argued that the criminal justice system is broken are law enforcement, the prosecution and the courts. When you examine these 3 major stakeholders in Albuquerque and Bernalillo County, one conclusion that can be arrived at is that they are not doing their jobs. They also have an extensive history of blaming each other or others for their failures.
When you examine the “check list” of the 50 different proposals that were the result of the Metro Crime Initiative, the proposals are essentially what all the participants have been working on over a number of years and have failed to deliver on. The list contains nothing new. The items listed are ones that the participants should have been doing all along in the first place.
The criminal justice system at all levels is only as good as those who are responsible for making it work and succeed. The participants in the city sponsored “Metro Crime Initiative” know what is wrong with the state’s criminal justice system. They know it is not a “broken system” but a “systems failure” caused by their own failures to act and to do their jobs effectively. It is way too easy to declare the system “broken” when problems identified within the criminal justice system would go away if the stakeholders would just do their own jobs and concentrate on doing their jobs in a competent manner. That would include Mayor Tim Keller managing and overseeing the Albuquerque Police Department effectively.
A link to a related blog article is here: