This one’s bad. Real bad.
Earlier today, the FBI released crime statistics for 2016. The Land of Enchantment had the highest violent-crime rate in the contiguous states, with only Alaska exceeding our dismal ratio of 702.5 murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults per 100,000 population. Our property-crime rate ranked worst in the entire nation.
A recent poll found that 69 percent of residents of New Mexico’s largest city consider crime their top concern, with a stunning 99 percent believing that crime is a “very serious” or “somewhat serious” in Albuquerque. The worry is warranted. Between 2014 and 2016, the murder rate in the city more than doubled.
You’re 2.9 times more likely to be the victim of a violent crime in New Mexico than in Utah. Property crimes are 30.4 percent less common in Colorado.
Whatever New Mexico’s “leaders” are doing to protect lives and property in their state, it isn’t working.
CCW!
When the City removed the red light cameras it gave the “green light” to the bad guys. The correlation of a rise in the broader crime rate to the removal of the cameras is telling. It told the malefactors that the citizenry wasn’t interested in enforcing the law. People more interested in what they could get away with. This “ethos” has now permeated the whole city. For Dan Lewis and Wayne Johnson to pose as crime fighters when Lewis spearheaded, and Johnson supported, the removal of the cameras is a travesty. Rio Rancho kept their speed vans. Check out their crime rate vis a vis Albuquerque.