Burglaries and car thefts drive N.M. crime rate

New FBI stats reveal overall uptick of criminal reports throughout state last year

New Mexicans were more likely to victimized by burglars and car thieves last year than residents of any other state, according to new data from the FBI.

The rates of murder and larceny also climbed in New Mexico. This development is almost certain to stoke debate over the state’s approach to reducing crime, an issue dominating Albuquerque’s mayoral election, a governor’s race that’s taking shape and clashes over the New Mexico court system’s overhaul of the bail system.

Despite the depressing data and horrifying headlines of the last year, crime rates for both the country and New Mexico remain lower than they were decades ago.

The murder rate ticked up nationally by about 8.6 percent from 2015 to 2016, for example, but is still half of what it was in 1980. And property crimes decreased nationally last year.

In New Mexico, the rates of violent crime and property crime were higher in 1996 than in 2016. Santa Fe residents saw violent crime and property crime rise about 4 percent.

But auto thieves seemed to have a field day. The number of automobiles reported stolen in the city spiked about 56 percent, and police point to Santa Fe’s place on what seems to be a corridor of auto theft.

Vehicles stolen in Santa Fe are often recovered in Albuquerque and vice versa, stripped of stereos or batteries that can be fenced to drug dealers.

“It’s a black market,” one Santa Fe police detective said when the trend began to emerge. “These people are often

struggling with addiction.”

But police have said thieves may also use stolen vehicles to commit other crimes, such as burglary and drug trafficking.

A spokesman for the Santa Fe Police Department said Monday thieves have targeted older model Hondas because the starter is easier to trick with a “fake key” than newer models. Older model pickups have been a common target, too.

New Mexico led the nation in auto theft last year as the number of such crimes rose nearly 36 percent.

The uptick in auto thefts seems largely centered around New Mexico’s biggest cities.

“We don’t see many of them. It does happen. But the majority of it is in Albuquerque,” said Santa Fe County Sheriff Robert Garcia.

Though two interstate highways cut through his jurisdiction, much of the area his deputies patrol is rural.

Across categories, the data seem to reflect a divide between New Mexico’s biggest cities and the state around them. The FBI estimates that, while crime rose overall in New Mexico, the rates of both violent crime and property crime fell in rural communities as well as midsize towns beyond the state’s metropolitan areas of Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Farmington.

The crime picture is complicated for Santa Fe, too, by the city’s expanding boundaries. Police in 2016 began covering an area annexed into the city. And another piece of the county will become part of the municipality in 2018.

Overall, the state also had the highest burglary rate in America with a 6 percent increase in 2016.

Murders increased nearly 19 percent, robberies about 10 percent, aggravated assaults about 8 percent and larcenies about 1 percent.

New Mexico is not new to being on top of these lists. The state had the highest or second-highest rate of burglary for at least each of the last five years.

And, with the latest data coming the same month as federal surveys that show the Land of Enchantment remains among the most impoverished states in the country, perhaps that should be no surprise.

“It’s a reflection of nine years of remaining in a recession,” said state Rep. Antonio “Moe” Maestas, D-Albuquerque, who co-chairs the Legislature’s subcommittee on criminal justice reform.

The FBI statistics predate changes in the state’s system of granting low bail or personal recognizance to certain nonviolent defendants. Maestas was among the lawmakers who supported reasonable bail for nonviolent defendants.

He points to the sluggishness of New Mexico’s economy during the last several years and the slow pace of economic recovery. He added that economic recovery will only be further hampered if New Mexico and particularly its biggest city cannot curb rising crime rates.

“We get the criminal justice system we pay for,” he said, pointing to courts and district attorneys’ offices he says are chronically underfunded.

Gov. Susana Martinez, a Republican and former prosecutor, points to something else: laws and judges that she says are too lenient.

Martinez has pushed for longer sentences. She has backed a tougher three-strikes law and reinstating the death penalty in some murder cases. But Democrats have stymied those proposals, arguing longer sentences do nothing to stop crime and would only prove costly for the state, economically and socially.

“New Mexicans are seeing the consequences of the failure of judges and the Legislature to act,” Joseph Cueto, the governor’s press secretary, said in a statement Monday. “Now that legislators are hearing loud and clear that New Mexicans want tougher crime legislation we hope they will now act.”

Maestas points, though, to inadequate staffing at law enforcement agencies across the state, including the Albuquerque Police Department.

“It’s easy for us as legislators to increase penalties and claim victory. It’s more difficult to find the money to fund the district attorney’s office,” he said.

Rape turned out to be the only category of crime where New Mexico saw a decrease. The state still reported the third-highest rate of rape in the country, though that is an improvement over previous years.

Still, even there, the numbers are complicated.

Advocates for sex-assault victims say rapes are largely unreported, and are quick to caution that the FBI’s numbers across all categories can be spotty.

The statistics are part of an annual report assembled from data collected by thousands of law enforcement agencies around the country. They are just one method of measuring crime around the country but are widely cited.

But some law enforcement agencies do not participate. And the data agencies submit can be incomplete.

For example, the report shows only one murder in the city of Santa Fe last year. But the Santa Fe Police Department investigated three murders.

A spokesman for the agency says such a discrepancy can occur when a crime is initially logged as a lesser offense. This can happen if a person is badly beaten, and the case is logged by police as an aggravated battery. If the beating victim later dies, the case becomes a homicide. But it might still be reported to the state’s Department of Public Safety and the FBI as an aggravated battery.