Sheriff’s deputy in fight to reclaim city
Editor’s note: Today, the Journal continues a threeday series on the impact and pervasiveness of drug use in the Metro area — with a spotlight on what law enforcement officers see day in and day out.
Growing up in the Northeast Heights, Alex Apodaca never came across hard drugs.
“The drug culture for me is a new experience,” he said. “I’d never seen it before.”
But patrolling the South Valley as a deputy with the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office has filled in those gaps for the 27-year-old.
“All of this is a whole different kind of lifestyle change to me. Seeing how people grew up, how they grow up now,” he said. “It’s interesting.”
It’s also Apodaca’s favorite place to be, he admits with a smile, his cruiser kicking up dust down a dirt road — past a menagerie of sprawling ranches, ramshackle housing complexes and the ruins of what one could only guess were once nice homes.
“It has character,” Apodaca said, with a chuckle. “It also has characters.”
The Journal spent a relatively quiet Saturday afternoon with Apodaca to get a closer look at how drug use drives crime in the areas that stretch beyond city limits, what resources deputies have in addressing those calls and how some of them feel about it beyond the badge.
In the past four years, Apodaca said he has hauled in dozens of people for drug possession, mostly heroin or methamphetamine. But he estimates the vast majority of the other arrests he’s made were somehow tied to drug use, as well.
“A lot of these crimes that happen, you tend to see the same kind of reasoning,” he said.
“Say, just for a basic larceny — they’re trying to get easy money right away — you can see the signs of drug abuse … track marks, scabs on their bodies, how they react to things.”
But as one of 30 deputies who is LEAD-certified, Apodaca has an additional tool in his belt for such calls.
LEAD, or Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion, is a behavioral health initiative launched in July that is aimed at reducing recidivism by giving police and deputies the discretion to offer treatment to those charged in low-level drug-related crimes instead of locking them up.
Started in Seattle in 2011, the program has since been replicated nationwide, including in Santa Fe in 2014. According to a three-year evaluation, Santa Fe has seen a drop in drug usage and jail visits for LEAD clients as the city saved taxpayer money.
Albuquerque police and BCSO deputies had referred 26 people into the program as of Oct. 14. Of those, 15 followed through and entered the program. Thirteen of those were found to be homeless, eight had pending charges and seven were unaware of upcoming court dates. The most commonly used drug among those clients is opioids, followed by meth and alcohol.
“I’m a big fan of giving people different resources, though I am skeptical about how many people will jump on that chance,” Apodaca said. “But at least it’s available.”
In the two months since he was trained, he said he has initiated at least three cases, but he doesn’t know if the individuals actually followed through with treatment.
If they don’t, a warrant will be issued for their arrest and Apodaca has heard several stories of that exact thing happening from other deputies.
“People that you just find a little bit of dope on them, they’ll take any chance to not go to jail that night — so they can just score again,” he said. “In order to help yourself you have to be willing. … You can give them a million options. Are they even going to take it though?”
Apodaca said he arrested a woman on stolen vehicle charges a few months back and offered her the program, but she was not interested. During a chitchat about her drug history, she told him she had been successful getting off heroin by switching to meth.
“Is one really the lesser evil? You’re just trading the same abuse. She didn’t understand that but, to me, that blew my mind,” he said. “That’s the hard part. They’re so entrenched into their drug use, do they even care?”
Apodaca then looked off with a thoughtful stare and said,
“Interesting fight we’re in, to reclaim our city.”
Apodaca has plenty of stories like that. Some he tells with a wink of humor, but many seem to leave the deputy feeling a sense of defeat. Particularly those that depict drug use as a scourge that ripples through generations.
“It’s never just one victim,” he said. “That’s a common story around here. One family member starts to do it and then you see them fall off the wagon. That’s completely new to me, watching families get torn apart by different narcotic use.”
Apodaca said he was recently called to help search a home where deputies say a 28-year-old woman asked her 11-year-old son to buy her meth from a dealer at a nearby park.
At the end of the day, Apodaca tries to picture a world without drugs. It’s not easy, but he is hopeful. He just knows this is not the way to get there.
“You arrest someone that’s a frequent user of narcotics — they come back out, they get high, we find them again. What are you doing in the grand scheme of things to change this city around?” he asks. “Nothing. You’re just playing with the system, hoping it changes. Anything that can help, I’m all for it. It’s just a problem of you really can’t help people unless they want to help themselves.”
Coming Tuesday
One man’s harrowing journey toward sobriety.