EDITORIAL: Getting tough on juvenile crime has thankfully become bipartisan

They may not yet be able to gather in the same room, but it’s encouraging to see New Mexico’s law enforcement and political leaders finally coalescing around getting tough on crime.

Listening to Bernalillo County District Attorney Sam Bregman, Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen and state Attorney General Raúl Torrez speak about crime at a town hall in Albuquerque on Wednesday, one might have thought the Democrats were actually Republicans.

The empty rhetoric about addressing the root causes of crime is waning. The discussion these days has aptly shifted to cracking down on it, especially juvenile crime.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham unfortunately didn’t attend the town hall She cited scheduling conflicts, as did Mayor Tim Keller.

Nonetheless, the governor appears to be on board, calling a special legislative session on crime less than an hour before the start of Wednesday’s town hall sponsored by the Journal, KOAT-TV and radio station KKOB.

In a subsequent interview with KOAT last week, the Democratic governor also sounded a lot like a Republican.

In her interview last week with KOAT’s John Cardinale, one of the best hard news reporters in the state, the governor said every time she’s shopped recently she’s witnessed a theft. That seems a bit of a stretch of credulity. We sometimes see shoplifting as well, but not every time we pick up our groceries and prescriptions. Nonetheless, we welcome the governor’s focus on crime, especially in the Metro.

The governor is clearly frustrated by her liberal colleagues in the Legislature. And so are New Mexicans.

Two years ago, after Democratic lawmakers blocked several of the governor’s crime-related initiatives, including a proposal to make it easier to hold defendants accused of certain violent crimes behind bars until trial, she said their inaction “defies explanation.”

Some Democratic lawmakers criticized the crime-related bills as politically motivated in an election year.

But times have changed — and big time.

The most impactful panelist at Wednesday’s town hall was Nicole Chavez, whose 17-year-old son Jaydon Chavez-Silver was killed in a June 2015 drive-by shooting in which he wasn’t the intended target. His only crime was being at the wrong house at the wrong time.

While some people talk about violent crime; Chavez lives through it daily. And her pain is palpable. There are far too many other moms in New Mexico also eternally grieving the loss of a child due to violent crime.

Wednesday’s panelists rightly advocated for harsher penalties for youth offenders.

Torrez said “the most impactful thing” he wants to focus on is young people and guns. He said a recently enacted law requiring a seven-day waiting period to buy a firearm may stem suicides, but it isn’t likely to keep any guns from kids, whom he said can easily find them on social media.

Torrez also noted there’s a deep connection between crime and child well-being, in which New Mexico ranks 50th in the nation. In fact, New Mexico has ranked 49th or 50th in child well-being every year since 2012, according to New Mexico Voices for Children.

“A broken (Children, Youth & Families Department) and child welfare system is catastrophic, not just for those children today, but for this community 10 or 15 or 20 years down the line,” Torrez said.

Yes, we aren’t giving our troubled youth the help they need. Still, there’s no excuse for a child to bring guns to schools, shopping malls or anywhere else — none. Yet, since September 2023, 160 juveniles were detained where a gun was present.

Bregman said absent a murder or gun charge, juveniles who commit crimes walk free.

“There are absolutely no consequences, none, none right now for juveniles who commit crimes without let’s say murder or a gun crime,” he said. “Let’s say you steal a car right now in Bernalillo County and you’re 16 years old. The chances of you spending one night in the detention home — zero. There are no consequences for juveniles.”

Bregman said there’s nowhere to put them. Many counties across New Mexico have closed their juvenile detention centers in recent years.

Consequently, the four juvenile detention centers remaining in the state — in Albuquerque, Farmington, Las Cruces and Lovington — are overwhelmed, not only with juveniles from their jurisdictions, but from across the state.

We’ve heard credible reports from law enforcement of murder warrants for juveniles in Southeast New Mexico not being served simply because there was no room at the four inns to house them pretrial.

If that’s not evidence of a broken criminal justice system, what is?

Bregman said on Wednesday the Bernalillo County Youth Services Center, the detention facility for children in the state’s most populous county, was at its maximum capacity of 51. He said 25 of those juveniles are charged with murder.

“If someone steals a car … and they have a bunch of drugs in the car, and even perhaps a gun in the car, they’re not even going to be booked into the D-home,” Bregman said. “The Children’s Code was done in the 1970s when kids used to get into a fist fight in the backside of school. Now, they drive around with bags of fentanyl … and shoot out the window because they think it’s cool because they got some likes on social media and those bullets end up going into a house and killing another kid.

“The times have changed,” Bregman continued. “The Children’s Code has to change with it.”

Allen said juveniles are the drivers of crime in Bernallio County and across the country.

“Juveniles that commit a violent crime, that are murdering, they need to be held accountable,” Allen said. “(The Youth Services Center) will not accept them unless they either shot and killed someone, or maybe if they fired a firearm out of a window. That’s a problem. That’s a system that has failed our youth.

“They know they’re going to get out and the next day they’re doing the exact same crime. That’s the truly revolving door of the juvenile system in state of New Mexico.”

A two- or three-day special session, as Bregman noted, is not enough time to reverse course. As he said, it would take a 60-day session to revise our juvenile criminal code. But we can make progress on a daily basis if state leaders first acknowledge the problem — as they did Wednesday.

The town hall was a good start. The special session in July can be another step. It’s encouraging law enforcement leaders are on the same page.

If state lawmakers can also rally around serious public safety bills rather than political stunts such as banning guns at polling sites, there may be cause for optimism.

However, the road to public safety is going to be long and arduous. It will take determination and perseverance beyond the terms and tenures of those who currently hold office and power.

But as they say, politics makes strange bedfellows.