Albuquerque has its high murder rate and the continual argument about pretrial detention and its effect on repeat offenders—or not. Fortunately we don’t suffer that problem. Ours is smaller, more prevalent and remains ignored by city officials and law enforcement.
Most citizens would shrink from the number of calls police, firefighters and paramedics receive daily, most of the day, for issues stemming from the homeless and drug addicted population. The calls vary from “aggressive panhandling” to someone waving a knife at people.
Española’s municipal elections are underway and it’s a good time to talk about one of the city’s biggest problems: the myriad misdemeanor interactions law-abiding citizens have with the less desirable citizens of the Valley.
No one is naive enough to think there is one answer, nor that we can improve the city in a short time. This is a huge problem, years in the making, growing daily, that will take a multi-pronged approach over the long stretch.
This isn’t the city’s problem. The problem just landed in its lap. The city suffers from being a small city (10,000) providing services to about 30,000. There are the pluses of receiving Gross Receipts Taxes from out-of-towners but there is the downside of the problems that come inside the city limits also.
The homeless, vagrants, mentally ill and drug addicts will congregate where it is most convenient and comfortable to do so.
We don’t have the answer. No one person does. However, there are many intelligent people who live here, retired here and have the skills, education and experience to give us a small piece of the puzzle. It’s up to city leaders to gather those people and take the problem apart, one facet at a time, then address the smaller issues.
In the meantime, something must be done to protect the 99 percent of the population from the one percent that goes to work, comes home and tries to live a life free from harassment and fear. A city Safety Committee meeting in November took up the issue of increasing penalties for misdemeanors but three months later nothing has been done.
Ironically, a citizen at the meeting complained about someone trying to break into his home while he was hunting. The suspect? Brandon Salazar, who was shot in the leg three weeks later during a questionable car purchase.
First District Court has a diversion program, written about at length by the Washington Post. Judge Jason Lidyard has made some headway and he and participants recounted in the Post’s story about successes. However, it’s an uphill slog.
Rio Arriba County Magistrate Court is trying to establish a similar program. The County received $560,000 to establish the program and two months after the Albuquerque Journal wrote a short story about the County getting this grant, County Health Director Lauren Reichelt still has no answer for its status.
Española Municipal Court has a teen court and a sort of diversion program where those charged can do community service. Without trying to prove a negative, these programs aren’t putting a dent in our petty crime issues. This is where most of our trespassed vagrants, panhandlers and shoplifters (most with misdemeanor warrants) eventually land.
We don’t want to guess, nor think about Judge Martin Martinez’s list of outstanding warrants. The time, labor and frustration with court no-shows would break anyone’s spirit. However, these are the people, most of whom city police officers know by sight and name, who must be dragged in front of the judge and then out to help clean up the city they’ve trashed, carelessly without consequences nor thought for their fellow human beings.
This is not an issue where we can place blame on a judge, a cop or a city employee. However, all of those people need to come together to address the issue. It would be more productive to round up those with outstanding warrants and run them through the system at once than city cops responding to call after call for the same stupid reasons.
Law enforcement agencies, courts and community services must pull together and address the issue or we will continue to live with that element and watch Española continue to shrivel as existing businesses close and new businesses and productive citizens shy away from our glaring and ignored problem.