Daniel Klein – journalist/contributor Posted: January 7, 2022 1:30 PM
When Mayor Tim Keller was first elected in 2017, the Albuquerque Police Department had a total of 836 sworn officers (all ranks included). Four years and one month later, APD has 893 sworn officers (including Chief Medina), a net increase of 57 officers. The sworn status of some of these officers is in question as they were brought in from out of state to fill high salaried commander and executive staff positions. I am counting them in the sworn category, but I am not sure all of them are sworn New Mexico law enforcement officers.
In 2017, Keller promised to hire 100 new police officers every year, with a goal of APD having 1,200 officers by 2022. He may have kept the promise to hire new officers, but he has failed to keep the veteran officers who were here. APD Chief Harold Medina blames this on the last police contract (signed in 2017) that gave substantial raises to veteran APD officers. Medina claims that because the retirement system for veteran officers is based on a high three year salary, that many APD officers have retired because it did not benefit them to stay longer.
Medina is correct in this statement, but there is a problem. Medina and Keller knew how the retirement for these officers is calculated, therefore, why didn’t they do something at the three year point to increase those salaries to entice these veteran officers to stay? Had they offered another, let’s say, 10% increase to those veteran officers at the three year point of the contract, they could have stopped many retirements as those officers would stay to build a new pension calculation.
This is the issue that plagues Medina and Keller. When they fail, they make statements that show they completely understand why they failed. The citizens must ask, “if you knew the problem, why didn’t you fix it before you failed?” It’s just like the ongoing crime epidemic, both Medina and Keller point to crime rising around the nation and that Albuquerque is just part of the national crime trend. It’s true that crime has risen significantly around the country, but that doesn’t give any comfort to Albuquerque crime victims. We don’t care about crime in Portland, we only care about crime in Albuquerque.
This same statement is true for APD manpower. If Medina and Keller knew there would be a major issue with retirement calculations, issues that would impact APD manpower, why didn’t they address it before the retirements happened? It’s like a mechanic telling you, after your car has broken down, that at your last service he knew the transmission was going to fail but he didn’t do anything about it. Would you continue to have that mechanic work on your car? Of course not, but in public safety it seems that we reward incompetence instead of demanding excellence.
Retirements only address a portion of the officers who have left APD. Many have quit because they have no faith in the leadership at APD and city hall. They were tired of the constant, incompetent, DOJ oversight. The lack of back up officers on the streets. The overworking of detectives because it is more important to fully staff DOJ force review, than it is to fully staff APD homicide. Morale at APD is in the toilet, once again Keller and Medina know this and acknowledge it, and once again they seem incapable of doing anything about it.
The future looks grim for the Albuquerque Police Department staffing issues. APD currently has 46 cadets in the police academy, that will not graduate until the summer of 2022. A source within APD said they only have one lateral officer in the pipeline to come on board.
The taxpayers of Albuquerque have spent tens of millions of dollars on APD’s budget over the last 4 years and they only show an increase of 57 officers. It seems the only people benefitting from APD right now are the highly paid outside DOJ monitors and the highly paid and bloated APD command staff.
Oh yeah, and the criminals who are running rampant.
This all falls upon Mayor Keller. The buck stops at his desk. He must start demanding excellence from APD command and when they fail, fire them and bring in someone who can do the job right. Keller must figure out a way to appease the federal judge overseeing the consent decree, so we can send James Ginger and his failed monitors packing. Ginger likes to blame APD for not complying with the decree, but it’s also Ginger’s job to help APD succeed. The failure of the consent decree are just as much Gingers’ fault as they are Medina’s.
Tim (Keller), you have been given four more years. What do you plan to do? I pray that in 2026, I can write a column that says APD has increased to 1,200 officers. Sadly, if past performance is an indicator of future performance, I don’t think that will happen. It’s up to you Tim, balls in your court.
Dan Klein
APD 1983 – 2003
*nothing in this column can be used or reprinted without the permission of the author.
To the author of this article, Daniel Klein:
When you send out your solicitations from your second career as owner of USA
USA LOCATORS LLC
10336 Durham Street Nw
Albuquerque, NM 87114
begin implementing a sub-line of information to the addressee on the outside of the envelope below the name of whom you are attempting to contact. If your company is obtaining information from probate courts around the country, indicate which estate you are seeking to ‘assist’ with. It does not appear you work as a debt collector, but if that falls under the scope of your work, the integrity of your blind solicitations would benefit from a disclosure of which medical practice or foreign (outside of the state of NM) corporate hospital system failed to coordinate pre-authrorizations with fFederal health insurance system or failed to enter co-payments into their systems for practice desk managers to collect when patient arrive to scheduled appointments.
The personal representative (executor) of an estate you are seeking to profit from should be the only person ‘interested parties’ should be contacting by mail, not the additional beneficiaries listed with an orphan’s court outside the state of NM. Your lack of transparency on your mailings is unappealing, and to see a former officer of the law, as the adult child of someone who had been an officer, along with your opinion editorials that ignore the billions local taxpayers have had to cover because of lawsuits against veteran APD officers, does not deliver confidence in wanting to establish a connection for your freelance private investigative services.
https://www.krqe.com/plus/data-reporting/how-much-have-lawsuits-against-police-cost-albuquerque-taxpayers/
Anyway, it appears the probate lawyer will take about 30% of what wasn’t left to religious non-profits and the net split for heirs *might* equal a partial recovery of what each heir had to earn at minimum wage jobs to afford associate’s degrees without assistance from the person who passed; the same person who had denied an obligation to pay FAFSA’s calculated family contribution. (You may even have been hired by one of the, almost 10 designated charities, to contact heirs living in the state of NM regarding their cut of the estate—again put that information in an re: line on the outside of your envelopes.)
So, no your envelope will not be opened, and likely most of your solicitations failing to disclose the reason as to why you are trying to connect with addressees will end up in paper shredders around the state. You deserve the feedback, because local small business owners keep money inside the state, and your (likely padded) high number of positive reviews probably sway clients to contact you for your services if they don’t feel like sitting on hold with the IRS, Social Security, or their estate’s CPA (who knew the decedent for 2 decades), on their own time; & if they are heirs to an amount that allows them to divert money into your wallet (not everyone has. It might be good for people who lost important documents to theft, fire, or poor organization. Consider networking with NM probate lawyers to get added to lists of auditors, auction houses, and estate liquidators that they provide to designated executors with lists of duties and responsibilities those individuals perform. Good luck.
Odds are this will be deleted. If you are a good detective you know who to remove from your business mail list. 😉