The following editorial appeared in the July 14th edition of the Sunday Journal. It was written by Del Esparza, Chairman of the Board, Terri Cole, President and CEO and Sherman McCorkle, State Legislative Affairs Chairman for the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce.
“If Not Us, Who? If Not Now, When?”
- Attributed to Rabbi Hillel the Elder (110 BC – 10 AD), made famous by President John F. Kennedy
We at the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce strive to make “our city and state a great place to start and grow a business, and a safe, exciting place to work and raise a family.” It’s our mission statement, on our website and in our Plan of Action. But when crime is out of control, as it has been for too many years in Albuquerque and across our state, that goal can too often seem like Mission: Impossible.
The five bills proposed for the special legislative session, scheduled to start Thursday, will help make our mission more possible. We’ll acknowledge at the outset these are not the reforms we believe will take a big bite out of the crime plaguing our cities and towns. But those issues — addressing juvenile gun violence and fentanyl trafficking and instituting rebuttable presumption — are not likely to find consensus in a two- or three-day session. We look forward to fighting for them come Jan. 21
In the meantime, we are struck by the quote we shared above, “If not us, who? If not now, when?” New Mexicans are long tired of crime and hungry for positive action, and these five bills, unanimously endorsed by our Board of Directors, can improve public safety, and in the constraints of a special session IF they don’t get watered down in the legislative process:
- Strengthen penalties for a felon convicted of possessing a firearm, making it a second-degree felony punishable by a minimum nine years in prison. There should be no question that convicted criminals bent on breaking the law by having a gun (and too often also committing still more crimes) need to be taken off our streets. It won’t take the sentencing of very many of these dangerous criminals for word to get out New Mexico is no longer a haven for ex-cons with guns.
- Prohibit pedestrians from occupying highway medians, on-ramps and exit ramps. It’s simply unsafe for people to be in narrow medians. In fact, in 2022, for the seventh year in a row, New Mexico was ranked as the most dangerous state, and Albuquerque the second-deadliest city, for pedestrians. Allowing people to stand mere inches from high-speed traffic in the name of civil liberty is misguided at best – the basic physics of a pickup or SUV vs. a person prove around 100 times a year in New Mexico it is a fatality waiting to happen.
- Require law enforcement agencies to report certain monthly crime incident reports and ballistic information.
The Chamber has long been a proponent of data-driven crime-fighting. The more precise and complete we can be in our data collection, the more strategic we can be in identifying crime drivers — people, places, weapons, vehicles, etc. — and efficiently addressing threats to public safety.
- and 5. Strengthen Criminal Competency statutes.
N.M.’s version of Kendra’s Law was watered down in 2016 in order to get it to the governor’s desk. Strengthening our criminal competency statute to mandate court-ordered treatment for a defendant deemed dangerous and incompetent, and better defining threat to self or others, will safeguard the public and the defendant.
We recognize it’s a bit unorthodox to call a special session in the middle of an election year – but public safety is at a crisis point: in the last two weeks alone police have dealt with a military-grade weapon and the killing of a minor in our Downtown parking garages. This is by no means the finish line, but it is an important step toward the long-term objective of making our city and state a safe, exciting place to work and raise a family.
And so to those who would argue against passing these five bills this week, we
would ask:
If not now, when?
To read the editorial featured in the Sunday Journal, click here.
