Panel votes ‘do not pass’ on APD mandate

Charter amendment sent to full City Council

The proposed charter amendment to mandate about 375 more sworn officers for the Albuquerque Police Department is on life support after a City Council committee earlier this month voted to forward it to the full council with a recommendation that it not be approved.

Voting for the “do not pass” recommendation were Councilors Trudy Jones, Pat Davis and Brad Winter. Councilor Don Harris, one of the amendment’s sponsors, was the lone dissenting vote.

Harris said he plans to reintroduce some form of the proposed charter amendment as an ordinance, saying he thinks it’s important for the city to commit to fully staffing APD.

The original proposal, introduced by Harris and Councilor Ken Sanchez, would have required the city to have 25 sworn police officers for every 11,500 residents, in effect mandating a police force of about 1,215 officers. That would put Albuquerque in line with cities like Denver and Nashville, Tenn.

As of late last month, APD had 839 officers. The department is budgeted for 1,000 officers, but the city has had difficulty filling the vacant positions.

The proposed charter amendment has failed to gain traction since it was unveiled two weeks ago. Among the concerns raised have been that the staffing model proposed is arbitrary and that policy decisions such as staffing levels at APD shouldn’t be included in a city charter.

At the Finance and Government Operations Committee meeting May 8, Harris tried to substitute the charter amendment to merely require that the city make fully staffing APD its priority every year. But Harris’ motion died for lack of a second.

Jones said that while the proposed substitute was “much, much better” than what had been proposed originally, she did not feel it belonged in the charter “because it does nothing in reality.”

“It’s a suggestion that the first priority shall be to fully staff the Albuquerque Police Department,” she said. “I believe that that’s a priority every year in our budget. We just haven’t been able to reach (the desired staffing levels).”

Davis agreed, saying that the council for the past two years has fully funded the initiative to build up APDs ranks.

Harris said that since the Legislature hasn’t adopted return-to-work legislation, which would allow retired officers to return to work while still collecting their pensions, the city should look at options, such as significantly boosting what it pays its officers to attract police from other agencies.

He also argued that if a mandate to fully staff the police department were in the city charter, the city would stop doing things like tying up gross receipts tax operating revenue on capital projects.

“For three years, we’ve been at 800-plus (officers), and the Department of Justice says 1,000 is a passing grade,” Harris said. “I don’t think we’re passing. I think we have to treat this as an urgent situation. ... I’m really just disappointed that members of this council do not want to give the public an opportunity to weigh in.”

At least six of the city’s nine councilors need to vote for a charter amendment to get it on the ballot.