City asks legislators to raise penalties on reckless driving, create statewide task force to investigate police shootings

Two killed, three injured in alleged street-racing crash

An Albuquerque man remained in jail Monday on charges of vehicular homicide in a Sunday nigh…

Paula Mills lost her daughter in a street racing crash in October 2023.

Her daughter, Jenna Hamilton, 42, was killed when Andy Doreste-Saumell allegedly raced on Louisiana with another driver and hit a sedan Hamilton was driving, killing her and the driver he was racing, according to a previous Journal story. Doreste-Saumell’s trial is slated to start in March, court records show.

“It should never have happened,” Mills told the Journal.

Mills attended Tuesday afternoon’s city of Albuquerque news conference at Eubank and La Entrada, an area notorious for street racing.

At the press event, the city requested that the Legislature consider increasing penalties for reckless driving that causes great bodily harm or death, being a felon with a firearm and creating a statewide task force to investigate police shootings.

These are a few items listed in the city’s 2025 Metro Crime Initiative, a list of public safety requests the city hopes legislators consider during the session.

The biggest concern on Tuesday was reckless driving and street racing, which has gone on for years. But now, “more lives are being lost, people are going faster,” Mayor Tim Keller said.

The APD traffic team is doing its best to combat the racing, “but we’re going to be asking for a little bit of help from the state Legislature,” APD Lt. Lawrence Monte said.

Police Chief Harold Medina said the city is asking for the penalty for reckless driving that causes great bodily harm or death, a third-degree felony, to be “more in line” with crimes like vehicular homicide.

“For years, we have put significant focus on street racing operations, traffic enforcement, and DWI checkpoints, but that alone won’t fix the problem,” Medina said in a statement. “By seeking change on a state level to improve our laws around reckless driving, we can have a real impact on driver behavior and, in turn, make traveling throughout our community safer.”

Along with increasing penalties, Mills said she also wants officers to go to schools and talk to students pursuing their driver’s licenses “and show them that police officers are there to keep them safe.”

“They are not there to make their lives miserable,” she said. “They care about them. They care about their safety.”

Aside from reckless driving, the city is asking for additional penalties for being a felon in possession of a firearm, a third-degree felony.

During past news conferences on police shootings, Medina said he told the media many times he would rather have cases of a felon in possession of a firearm prosecuted federally “because their laws have teeth,” as opposed to state laws.

“Some people say that harsher penalties don’t prevent crime,” said Rep. Joy Garratt, D-Albuquerque, who was at the press conference. “They do demonstrate, however, that destructive actions have serious consequences, and word gets around.”

The city is also asking the Legislature to create a statewide multi-agency task force to investigate police shootings.

What is needed is an agency “that investigates all officer-involved shootings,” Medina said, one that is independent from every police chief, one that is independent from every county sheriff and one in which the public can have trust.