Governor makes a case she's succeeding in combating gun violence

Oct. 10—Robots testing school wastewater for fentanyl, increasing treatment for those with substance abuse and arresting more than 500 people in Bernalillo County, many for misdemeanors.

Those are a few of the successes Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham attributed to her public health order targeting gun violence, which she called "a cancer" during an update on Tuesday.

"We want to demonstrate, and can today, that collected efforts and targeted resources can really make a difference in making an impact," Lujan Grisham said from Santa Fe. "We're looking for sustainable long-term impacts that will stay the course so our communities are safer."

She added, "And we're gonna keep at it until there's not a single person in New Mexico who doesn't feel like we're turning the corner."

Lujan Grisham put the 30-day order in place early last month, declaring gun violence a public health emergency following the shooting death of an 11-year-old after leaving an Isotopes baseball game. The governor initially included a ban on publicly carrying firearms in Bernalillo County, but that was trimmed back — to only include parks and playgrounds — after a federal judge issued an order blocking the ban.

Last Friday, the governor renewed the public health order, with some additions: having gun buy-backs in Albuquerque, Española and Las Cruces and providing treatment to those seeking help battling addictions within "24 hours of the request."

During Tuesday's news conference, the governor's Cabinet members individually touted what they saw as the health order's successes in tackling gun violence: the arrest of 502 people in less than 20 days — with at least a hundred on misdemeanors; 20 seized guns in a city that saw more than 5,000 guns stolen and not recovered since 2018; and 38 fewer gunshots across three days in the Albuquerque area, a city that last year saw an average of 100 bullets fired daily.

Patrick Allen, secretary of the state's Public Health Department, on Tuesday spoke of gun violence as a disease, a contagion with symptoms, and a way to fight and prevent it.

He said while homicides and shootings drive recent increases in gun violence, suicide remains the number one cause of gun deaths in New Mexico.

Miranda Viscoli, co-president of New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence, said in a statement, "We continue to fail our youth, the unsheltered, those living in poverty and people with substance use disorders."

"An increase in arrests and traffic citations will do little to fix the problem when it comes to gun violence prevention," she said.

Since the public health order was put in place, officials say a measure of success is that jail bookings have gone up.

State Corrections Secretary Alisha Tafoya Lucero said a swath of recent arrests led to an 11% increase in the jail population at the Metropolitan Detention Center. The jail is notoriously stretched thin by staff vacancies and has been the site of more than two dozen inmate deaths since 2020, many of them while detoxing from drugs and alcohol.

To help lighten the load on MDC, Tafoya Lucero said 48 of MDC's "most staff-intensive, violent, dangerous, inmates" will be transferred to a state prison but did not specify details of when or where the transfer would happen.

The current MDC population is 1,647 people — or 84% full — with the staffing vacancy of 38%.

Attorney Kate Loewe, who represents incarcerated people in MDC's reforms settlement, said she is concerned for both those detained and those staffing the detention center.

"The jail is an already overburdened and understaffed facility. I cannot imagine how the county would be able to provide adequate medical care and security for such a large influx," she said. "If we look at the deaths over the past year, the majority of people died just a few days into their incarceration. This is a particularly vulnerable time and I can only hope that the county and (University of New Mexico Health systems) are prepared to provide adequate medical care and monitoring for so many people."

Loewe said with so many resources going toward arrests, there needs to be "commensurate and adequate" resources for the community, like supportive housing, substance use treatment and funding for the public defender.

Juvenile arrests have also gone up.

Teresa Casados, acting secretary with the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department, said the statewide juvenile detention population has gone up 16%, or about 15 people, since Sept. 20 as part of the order.

She said they've put 32 juveniles behind bars and 13 of those arrests required an override — where a risk assessment tool suggested releasing them until trial. Four of those cases involved a gun, one was for assault on a school employee and another three were related to auto theft. She said six of the juveniles have since been released by a judge.

Chief Public Defender Ben Baur said Tuesday that, "Incarcerating children should not be a goal in and of itself.

"How does this actually improve public safety? Because without counseling, drug treatment, education, and a meaningful intervention, just holding a kid in a cell isn't going to solve these problems."

The governor's administration said it is addressing the gap between those who battle substance abuse and the resources they need, on which the state has long fallen behind.

Kari Armijo, secretary of the Human Services Department, said they are taking "a more proactive approach" to get people treatment, enhance access to health care and wraparound services like housing and transportation.

She said the department is dedicated to ensuring that people who need access to drug and alcohol treatment get help within 24 hours. Armijo said it has used data to identify and offer help to thousands of people on Medicaid who had an emergency visit related to substance or alcohol abuse.

Out of 10,984 Medicaid members, 66% are receiving treatment or are engaged with a treatment plan, she said. Armijo said they have increased peer support workers in emergency rooms, are tracking treatment plans as they go forward and establishing a helpline for those who need treatment but haven't gotten it yet.

She said the department is also working with prisons and jails to ensure access to treatment for those being released and is working with schools to get alerts on students experiencing drug and alcohol abuse.

James Kenney, secretary with the state's Environment Department, said wastewater testing for fentanyl in the Bernallilo County, Albuquerque and Rio Rancho school systems would begin testing next week with results expected within two weeks from then.

Kenney said, much like how they tested wastewater for COVID, they will pop a manhole and have a robot collect samples every hour for eight to 24 hours. He said those samples are then sent to a lab.

Lujan Grisham hypothesized that they may discover that drugs are being sold nearby, that dealers may be preying on, or employing, students or faculty to sell drugs in schools.

"I mean, we don't know. We don't know what we don't know but that information allows us to do a whole lot more work in the public safety and rehabilitation side of the equation," she said.

Public Safety Secretary Jason Bowie said he hoped the gun buybacks — a new addition to the governor's order — would also take guns off the streets and make an impact, particularly in reducing children's access to guns.

He acknowledged that such events were not likely to get firearms from criminals but hoped to gather unwanted guns from those who inherited one, or are not trained to use the one they own or "might recognize that a firearm might not be for them."

"Whatever the reason is, the goal for us is to reduce the availability of guns in our communities," Bowie said.