New Mexico’s persistently high levels of gun crimes

A child or teenager will be arrested and charged with possessing a firearm on three out of four days in New Mexico, the governor’s senior public safety adviser said Monday.

“That number is way too high,” Benjamin Baker, senior public safety adviser to Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham told Republican members on the New Mexico GOP’s Public Safety Legislative Task Force. “Work needs to be done to address what is happening with that age creep and violence related to our juvenile offenders.”

He said that the Albuquerque Public Schools system has caught students bringing guns to school 10 times this academic year.

Baker was one speaker in a daylong series of panel discussions that ranged from the challenges of preventing drug trafficking to barriers to holding repeat offenders in jail. Public safety has factored prominently into the governor’s legislative agenda. Last year, she called a special legislative session on crime reporting, gun violence, drug overdoses and more. The special session adjourned after just five hours without passing any legislation related to crime, public safety or drug use — though Senate Republicans introduced more than a dozen.

The subject of repeat offenders has become a common refrain on the campaign trail among New Mexico gubernatorial hopefuls. However, a 2024 Legislative Finance Committee report found that “most dismissals for repeat offenders were due to issues with evidence collection and victim or witness cooperation.”

That same report found that New Mexico’s crime rate is consistently above the national average. In the state’s largest city, though, police data shows that levels of property crimes, violent crimes and homicides are down year-over-year, while arrest numbers are up. The data shows that Albuquerque logged 5,260 violent crimes from January to September of 2024 and 4,601 from January to September of this year. Likewise, there were 87 homicides logged by September of 2024 and 58 by September of this year.

In November, Legislative Finance Committee analysts told state lawmakers that youthful offenders in New Mexico return to the justice system because of a lack of prevention programs and significant gaps in behavioral health services. The Legislative Finance Committee report found that New Mexico’s kids experience outsized rates of adverse childhood experiences like physical abuse and household substance abuse. It noted that juvenile suspects have faced an uptick in charges of battery, fighting, carrying a deadly weapon on school property and cannabis possession in restricted areas. New Mexico routinely ranks 50th for child well-being in the national Kids Count report published by the nonpartisan Annie E. Casey Foundation, which is dedicated to researching child welfare. 

While elected Democrats and Republicans alike have called for legislative remedies to juvenile crime, members of the legislative task force on Monday voiced frustration with how their public safety proposals have failed to advance through the state Legislature. Multiple times, they mentioned Senate Bill 166, sponsored by Sen. Antonio “Moe” Maestas (D-Albuquerque) in this year’s regular session, which would have changed the state law’s definition of “a harm to self’ and ‘harm to others” to permit more people to be civilly committed to locked facilities. The bill cleared the Senate but died in the House.

“When we’re bringing this legislation,” said Rep. Nicole Chavez (R-Albuquerque), whose son was killed in a 2015 drive-by shooting, “they die in their first committee.”

Behind the dais at Monday’s meeting was a panel made up solely of Republicans. When discussion drifted toward partisan talking points, one senator was quick to defend the Democratic governor. 

“Keeping New Mexico safe should not be a partisan issue,” said task force Co-Chair Sen. Crystal Brantley (R-Elephant Butte). “The far right is pretty quick to say ‘Well, crime is up, we’re the most dangerous state in the nation because we have a Democrat governor.’ The reality is, that’s not fair. We’re not even getting these bills to her desk.”