Rio Arriba County’s reputation for lawlessness apparently has not reached Washington, D.C.
The County has received only $24,043, or less than 1 percent, of the $18 million slated to go to law enforcement agencies across the state as part of the federal stimulus bill passed in February.
Rio Arriba’s amount was the fourth lowest distributed to New Mexico counties by the federal Justice Department.
However, the County came out better than the city of Española. The city will not receive any of the grant money, according to the federal Justice Department.
“I’m confused,” Española Mayor Joseph Maestas said. “We had been told there weren’t going to be any earmarks. They’re no secret, our public safety issues. We thought we would be able to compete for grants.”
But Española’s crime rates may come as a surprise to the Department — because it does not appear Española has been reporting crime statistics to the FBI.
Eligibility for the law enforcement grants was determined by the Department using a mathematical formula that takes into consideration city and county population sizes and reported violent crime rates, Secretary of the Bureau of Justice Assistance Lynnell Clarke said.
The funding is provided through the Justice Assistance Grants Program, as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, according to the Department.
The Justice Assistance Grants have been slated for counties’ and municipalities’ law enforcement training and equipment, drug treatment, and victim assistance programs, according to the Department.
The system favors relatively large cities and cities with relatively high crime rates, Clarke said.
But if a city’s crime data are not reported to the FBI, it may not be noticed when it comes time to allocate law enforcement dollars, Clarke said.
“Some (cities) don’t report accurately what their crime statistics are,” Clarke said. “That could have been a factor. If there’s not reporting, we don’t know about it and that would mean they weren’t automatically considered for the (stimulus) grants.”
New Mexico is one of only four states that does not have a a state Uniform Crime Reporting program that compiles crime rates from all of its cities and counties each month for reporting to the FBI Crime Reporting Bureau Chief Steven Fischer said.
Instead, each city and county in New Mexico is responsible for reporting its own data each month to the FBI, Fischer said.
“Participation is voluntary,” Fischer said. “The final responsibility for data submissions rests with the individual law enforcement agency.”
Taos, Las Vegas, Bloomfield, Aztec, Grants, Gallup and Farmington all manage to do that — and all were deemed eligible for the Department’s law enforcement stimulus grant money.
But there is no crime data for Española in the FBI’s Unified Crime Reports database for the past decade.
That could well render the city invisible to Department statisticians when they were assessing which Northern New Mexico towns were eligible for law enforcement stimulus grants, Clarke said.
Maestas said the city will likely apply for other federal public safety grants.
In contrast to Española, the Rio Arriba County Sheriff’s Department has dutifully reported crime data to the FBI, Fischer said.
Nevertheless, only three other counties in the state — Socorro, Torrance and Curry — will receive less money than Rio Arriba.
Rio Arriba County must apply for the funds before May 18 to receive them, according to the Department’s web site.
“It’ll pay for a couple of radios,” Rio Arriba County Sheriff Joe Mascareñas said.
Like Maestas, the County is now scrambling to identify other sources of stimulus money, Assistant County Manager Tomas Campos said.
“I don’t know why Justice gave us so little,” Campos said. “All these things are clear as mud. We’re scrambling to piece them together. But it’s too early to say we got the shaft. There’s still Homeland Security money. I have a call in to Sen. (Jeff) Bingaman’s office to see if they know of anything coming down the pike.”