One attorney with the New Mexico Public Defender’s Office suggests that solution is looking in the wrong direction, and believes more punishment only brings more crime.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is bringing state lawmakers back to the Roundhouse this July to hammer out some new public safety legislation. But it does not appear addressing teen violence is on the agenda.
It seems she is focused on some other public safety issues, specifically in the courts. She has acknowledged teen violence is a serious issue, but we’ve yet to see any serious solutions on the table.
When KOB 4 sat down with her earlier this year, she suggested a pilot program requiring teens to participate in some type of meaningful activity outside of schools. But it doesn’t appear that idea has gone anywhere.
Some law enforcement leaders — including the Bernalillo County district attorney — believe it’s time to rework the state’s juvenile justice laws, and demand more accountability from these teen suspects.
But one attorney with the New Mexico Public Defender’s Office suggests that solution is looking in the wrong direction, and believes more punishment only brings more crime.
“Increasing penalties for kids is going to do nothing except for create a career criminal,” said Dennica Torres with the New Mexico Public Defender’s Office.
Torres says it’s important to remember teenage suspects are not adults.
“They don’t have the adult brain, and we really have to treat them like children. They’re very impulsive, they’re very immature, they’re very reactive,” said Torres.
A potentially lethal combination when guns are involved. Torres admits more teens are getting their hands on guns.
“It’s no longer just words or fists, it’s guns,” Torres said. “Unless we get rid of the internet and social media, we’re never gonna get rid of their access to almost anything they could ever want.”
However, she says increasing punishments for teen gun crimes ignores the reason why many teens have guns in the first place.
“A lot of kids are carrying guns because they think other kids are carrying guns. So they carry guns, because they’re afraid. They’re afraid they’re going to encounter somebody that, you know, doesn’t like them, or a bully at school,” said Torres.
It’s a vicious cycle, and Torres says locking those teens up doesn’t solve much.
“The maximum usually is about 30 years. So you incarcerate a child who’s 16, at 46, they’re going to come out, and they’re not going to have any idea how to function in society. They’re just going to turn right back to crime,” Torres said.
Torres believes educational programs – like the violence intervention program — are the best way to tackle teen violence. She says they have to be crafted for the teenage brain.
“It really needs to come from the view of ‘This is what could happen to you, if you decide to carry a gun and use it,’” said Torres. “Because a lot of times they’re going to not necessarily resonate with the victim, but they’re going to resonate with the fact that you’re talking to them about how it can affect their future and their family.”
Torres noted Bernalillo County’s Juvenile Detention Center is full and understaffed. She believes increasing punishments for teen criminals is just throwing gasoline on that fire.
Torres suggests state lawmakers should commit the money and resources to develop a statewide violence education program, and bring it to high schools and middle schools.
Ten days ago, New Mexican Republican Ronnie Lucero posted on X before heading to a Trump golf resort in Miami to attend the Republican candidate’s Latino Summit. He wrote, “I am going to ask President Trump to come to New Mexico now that we are within the margin of error of flipping red.”
He says his conversation with Trump was maybe 15 seconds long, and he does not take credit, but when the rally was confirmed, Lucero was jubilant. He is the former chair of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly, and has the fervor of a convert.
“I was a Democrat,” he said. “I actually voted for Bill Clinton, and when George Bush became president, I voted for Bush. I voted for Obama his first election, and I voted against him in the second election.”
As he got more involved in politics he felt his values and his identity were pulling him to the right.
“It became more clear to me that I was very conservative. And, you know, our values as a Hispanic community are very conservative.”
As former President Donald Trump stops in Albuquerque for a rally Thursday, his decision to call on New Mexico so close to the election might seem surprising. Polls suggest his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, is set to win by several points.
But Trump’s visit fits into a concerted effort. New Mexico is the state with the highest proportion of Hispanic voters, about 45%, coming from many backgrounds, including centuries-old families and recent immigrants. And Republicans are working to win them over up and down the ballot.
“The Republican Party of New Mexico has made a pretty strong effort to get more of the Hispanic representation in the party itself,” said Lucero, whose day job is selling used cars in Albuquerque.
For example, KUNM found that in the four state Senate races which Republicans lost by the smallest margin last time, the party is running Hispanic candidates this time around. And a report last year by the news outlet Axios found a record number of Hispanic New Mexicans running as Republicans for the state House of Representatives.
Lucero says the party is working to appeal to Hispanic voters’ core values: family, culture, economic opportunity and freedom.
But of those, he says the most important argument right now is the economy. Hispanic households here are a bit more likely to be family households, and household income is lower than that of white families.
“So inflation is actually hitting our families a lot more,” he said.
He also said he makes arguments around public safety. The Albuquerque Police Department said last year that most victims and suspects of homicide are Hispanic.
Lucero says the campaign has been going door to door and holding events specifically focused on the Hispanic community. The New York Post reported last week that conservative groups are spending $5 million on Spanish-language ads here in the final stretch of the campaign.
Lucero does not focus as much on issues like abortion, or the rights of transgender people. But some Hispanic Republicans do. Gabriel Ramos is running for state senator in Southern New Mexico, and he also switched sides after in 2019 joining a group of Democrats who voted to keep an abortion ban from the 1960s on the state’s books.
“The liberal/progressive movement that’s going on, I just didn’t agree with,” he said. “I just felt that I needed to become a Republican.”
He said the Democratic party has changed since it dominated the unions in the mining community in which he grew up.
If the miners were alive today, he said, “I don’t think that if they really looked at what the parties stood for, I don’t think that most of them would agree with most of the Democrat values.”
And the real reason for Trump’s visit might lie in a race where the candidates are vying ferociously for Hispanic voters: the 2nd Congressional District in southern New Mexico, which is nearly 60% Hispanic.
Nationally, the race to control the House of Representatives is a toss-up, and this contest is one of the tightest in the country. Democratic candidate Gabe Vasquez, who is from a Mexican immigrant family, won by a whisker two years ago and insists he’ll win again.
“There’s a narrative that we are losing Latinos to the Republican Party, and to folks that say that in my district, I would say that that couldn’t be further from the truth,” he said.
He pointed out that a Hispanic outreach center that opened last election season, when Republican candidate Yvette Herrell was in office, in Albuquerque’s heavily Hispanic South Valley, and promised pizza parties and job fairs, has since closed.
“That was at a place where Republicans had a press conference and had vowed that they would do a better job of attracting Latino communities and Hispanic voters,” he said.
Herrell is running again this time and is expected to speak at the Trump rally. In an email statement to KUNM, Vianca Rodriguez, the Trump Campaign Deputy Director of Hispanic Communications, said, “The Trump campaign’s Latino outreach strategy is a comprehensive, all-hands-on-deck effort,” saying that Latino Americans for Trump staff are working in GOP offices in heavily Hispanic areas across Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia. She also referred to the Vice President as “Que Mala” (translation: how bad!) Kamala Harris.
Republicans looking for reasons to be optimistic in New Mexico have pointed to a recent poll that showed Harris with only a three point lead, though Source New Mexico reports that poll was conducted by a firm owned by Kellyanne Conway, a former spokesperson for Trump.
State Representative Stephani Lord (R-Sandia Park) told Newsmax this week, “what I’m hearing in New Mexico is a lot of people that were not going to support Trump previously are totally on board with him. I’m talking about our Hispanic voters.”
She did not offer any evidence and most polls show Harris with a convincing lead. The chair of the Democratic Party of New Mexico, Jessica Velasquez, said her party has long done a better job representing the Hispanic community.
“You know, the Democratic Party has always had Hispanic candidates at the federal level for years,” she said. “The overwhelming majority of Hispanic state legislators in both chambers in Santa Fe are Democrats. There are only a handful of Hispanic Republicans.”
Still, KUNM spoke to a few Democrats who think their party needs to not take Hispanics for granted, like the former Democratic mayor of Las Vegas, Louie Trujillo.
“I’m surprised at how many Trump supporters there are in northern New Mexico,” he said. “Younger people, younger than me. Those are the Gen Z voters, who people were hoping to get out and capture that Democratic vote.”
He remembers an enthusiastic Obama campaign in Las Vegas in 2008 and feels the national party could up its game in New Mexico today. In heavily Hispanic Mora County, County Commissioner Veronica Serna, another Democrat, also sounded a note of caution.
“Especially because it’s always been predominantly Democrat, I don’t think we can just assume that it’s going to continue being that way,” she said. “I think that, especially for the younger voters, they have a mind of their own.”
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