GUEST EDITORIAL
Excuses, excuses, excuses.
If excuses for inaction on crime are good campaign issues, Democratic candidates for the Statehouse are poised for another landslide victory in November.
The excuses for not taking action during July’s special legislative session on any of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s public safety proposals were flying like Frisbees at last week’s meetings of the Courts, Corrections & Justice Committee — an interim bicameral committee of 32 state lawmakers that meets between legislative sessions.
Top lawmakers said they need more time, more research into the unintended consequences of crime proposals, more expert testimony, more panel discussions, more doughnuts and coffee from the nearby table that sustained them throughout the day-long hearings Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and for which they automatically receive a daily per diem of $231, plus mileage.
During the CCJ’s committee hearing Tuesday morning, state Sen. Mimi Stewart, D-Albuquerque and president pro tempore of the New Mexico Senate, said lawmakers needed more time to address incompetency in New Mexico’s criminal statutes, a huge loophole that forms the foundation of our revolving-door justice system.
Lawmakers discussed an “off-ramp” to the governor’s proposal of requiring the temporary detention of defendants who are deemed incompetent in certain felony cases, which a working group is calling “outpatient competency restoration.”
“We’re all struggling to understand this and come up with solutions,” Stewart said. “What does an outpatient competency restoration look like, and are they really doing this in other states?”
New Mexico Supreme Court Justice Briana Zamora responded that most states do have provisions for outpatient and residential competency restoration in their criminal laws.
“We don’t have enough evaluators, we don’t have enough behavioral health experts,” Stewart continued. “We don’t have a good behavioral health system already. We don’t have enough assisted outpatient treatment, so instead we’re going to focus on an outpatient competency restoration? … It just sort of screams immediately to me that these are people who need treatment. They need treatment, they need housing, they need to pull themselves out of poverty and yet we’re going to focus on making sure they understand that they did a crime and they have to help their attorney to get them either in or out of jail. It just seems backwards and crazy making to think that that’s what we’re going to focus on.”
House Speaker Javier Martínez, D-Albuquerque, is not a member of the Courts, Corrections & Justice Committee, but he made a cameo appearance Tuesday morning, summing up the defensive posture of Democratic leaders after they summarily rejected all of the Democratic governor’s proposed public safety measures in July.
“This is the first opportunity I get to address some of the misconceptions and misinformation that took place post-special session,” Martínez said. “These are very complicated issues and not only are we trying our best, we are doing a damn good job of addressing these issues.”
Perhaps the speaker will stand by those sentiments and order some “We are doing a damn good job on crime” bumper stickers for his fellow House Democrats.
Speaker Martínez appeared agitated by the Journal’s July 21 editorial, “NM Dems appear to care more about criminals than their victims,” https://www.abqjournal.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-new-mexico-democrats-appear-to-care-more-about-the-criminals-than-their-victims/article_f473b12e-4612-11ef-a000-a7f62428b0f0.html, reading excepts to the Courts, Corrections & Justice Committee on Tuesday.
“It goes on to say ‘How hard is it to require court-ordered behavioral health treatment for repeat offenders accused of a serious violent offense?’” the speaker said. “Clearly it is very difficult. This is the kind of process, madame chair, that quite frankly should have been invested in, time-wise, by the executive, and it just was not. This is the kind of process that it takes to really get to a point where you can have a substantive proposal that we can all debate, and that we can all amend, and that we can all work collaboratively on to get across the finish line. But this is how much work it takes, and this is just one group. There have been several processes playing out throughout the state, through a number of different agencies, working their way through whatever process gets set forth.”
The speaker’s word salad was a vegan’s delight, and he kept the dressing flowing.
“It goes on to say, back to the editorial, ‘How hard is it to pass a law prohibiting loitering on a median no wider than 36 inches?'” he continued. “Very hard. I was in Silver City this weekend and I saw a group of kids from Silver High fund-raising, and I looked at the median, it was at a red light, and I didn’t take a tape measure but I’m also not blind. And I looked and that’s probably about 18 inches. That would have been made illegal (by one of the governor’s proposals) and I’m wondering would local police departments have been enforcing that? I seriously doubt it, because as they always tell me, they have bigger fish to fry.”
Comparing students raising money in a median in Silver City for an hour or two on a weekend to the daily sight of panhandlers standing in medians all over Albuquerque shows how much the speaker and other Democratic leaders are flailing in the wake of the failed special session.
The excuses didn’t stop there. Speaker Martínez then directed his jeremiad at former Republican governor Susana Martinez, who has been out of office for six years.
“We had a governor in 2014 that dissolved what little behavioral system we had,” he said. “And yes, it’s been 10 years, and yes it’s been a struggle to rebuild that system, a real struggle.”
Speaker Martínez then turned his aim back at the current governor.
“Had we rubber-stamped those proposals during the special, first of all, I guarantee you there would be lawsuits left and right, so these things wouldn’t have actually been implemented for a while,” the speaker concluded. “And even if they were implemented, the unintended consequences of depriving someone of their constitutional liberties, simply because a member of government drove past an intersection and saw somebody smoking fentanyl and their sensibilities were so impacted that they cast such a wide net is, is, would be a tragedy.”
Martínez, who has penned four op-eds published in the Journal this calendar year, also announced Tuesday he was canceling his Journal subscription. If he hadn’t, he might have read Thursday’s front-page story about a homeless man breaking windows at multiple Old Town businesses and the Albuquerque Museum Tuesday morning while also setting fire to The Shop at Old Town. He might have read that damages to glass panels at the Albuquerque Museum are estimated to cost over $38,000. He might have read about Outpost 1706 owner and former New Mexico State Police Chief Pete Kassetas saying city and state leaders are of no help. He might have read that Old Town business owners are worried the area is turning into another Central Avenue corridor.
What is not misinformation is that House and Senate Democrats did not give any of the governor’s proposed bills a single committee hearing during the special session. What is not a misconception is that even the body wash and shampoo are now locked up behind plexiglass at drug stores in Albuquerque due to rampant shoplifting. What is factual is that 3,217 defendants charged with 16,045 crimes since 2017 have had their cases dismissed after being found incompetent to stand trial. What is not complicated is that U.S. News & World Report ranks New Mexico the most dangerous state in America based on violent and property crime rates.
What is a tragedy is that one of New Mexico’s top legislative leaders believes endless panel discussions and not reading the newspaper are crime-fighting strategies. House and Senate leaders may have the luxury of studying the root causes of crime down to the last jelly-filled doughnut, but the rest of us have to either deal with the crime in our daily lives, or just give up and leave the state, or at least its largest city.
The Democratic governor is trying to do something about crime. She proposed five specific public safety bills for lawmakers to consider during the special session. Since the session failed, Lujan Grisham has been holding town halls on public safety across the state, where’s she’s getting an earful from crime victims.
But progressive Democrats who rose up through the defund-the-police community organizer ranks like Speaker Martínez instead want to study crime. They have become as soft on crime as the jelly doughnuts that sustain them throughout their day-long lamentations about why they can’t really do anything about crime.
Tackling crime isn’t a partisan issue, as the rift between the Democratic governor and the Democratic House leader demonstrates. It’s a rift between those who want to do something about crime and those who are more worried about the unintended consequences of doing something about it.
Fortunately, there’s an election on the horizon and all 112 legislative seats are up for grabs, even in Albuquerque’s House District 11, where Speaker Martínez is being challenged by Republican Bart Kinney.
Voters have a clear choice in November: The status quo and more excuses from Jelly Dog Democrats, or fundamental change on public safety.
We’re rooting for fundamental change.
