The New Mexico governor’s mansion sits on a hilltop in Santa Fe, roughly 7,100 feet above sea level.
The air smells of pine needles and sweet meadow grass. An original Georgia O’Keeffe painting greets visitors as they enter the foyer of the elegantly appointed home.
Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat entering the final few years of her governorship, has been spiffing up the grounds of the residence to showcase her state’s rich culture and immense beauty. But for all its splendor, New Mexico faces some grave problems, she said. “Have you ever been to Albuquerque?”
In Albuquerque, the state’s largest city, homeless encampments clutter the sidewalks and the highway underpasses. In neighborhoods like the International District, people in drug-induced psychosis wander into busy streets and parking lots, oblivious to traffic. At one store in that neighborhood, there have been seven murders since 2020 and one shootout that injured a police officer.
The governor and her family have personally experienced the violence in New Mexico. This summer, a man with a long criminal record randomly attacked the governor’s daughter-in-law with a rock and “cracked open her skull in several places,” the governor told a town hall in July. She spent several days in intensive care.
“I’d like to tell you this is an anomaly,” Ms. Lujan Grisham said. “It is not.”
Even as crime declines rapidly across the United States and fatal overdoses decrease, the violent crime rate in New Mexico was twice the national average in 2023, according to the Council of State Governments Justice Center. The state continues to struggle with the fallout from fentanyl and meth use, including among the homeless.
Ms. Lujan Grisham, 65, said her state must face a hard truth: Mentally ill or drug-addicted people living on the streets must be compelled to get help.
She is among the Democratic governors who are trying to chart a path forward for their party, following its resounding defeat in the election last month. But her efforts to confront crime have, at times, exacerbated fissures among Democrats in her own state.
Some of her Democratic allies accuse the governor of using frightening descriptions of people living on the streets that echo Republican talking points about migrants. They say that the state lacks the mental health resources to accommodate all of the people who would be required to undergo treatment.
Democrats in other states have also tried to send the message that they are tackling the issues of homelessness and addiction. Gov. Gavin Newsom recently put on work gloves to clean up an encampment in California himself. Gov. Kathy Hochul is deploying increasing numbers of the National Guard to New York City’s subways. Oregon lawmakers rolled back a law that decriminalized hard drug use.
But these issues have been especially challenging in New Mexico. Heading into the pandemic, the state’s behavioral health system was in turmoil after a previous governor accused many providers of fraud.
New Mexico’s criminal justice system also has struggled to keep pace with the amount of crime.
More violent crime went unsolved in New Mexico in 2023 than in any other state, according to an analysis by the Council of State Governments Justice Center.
Ms. Lujan Grisham is trying to strike a balance between a liberal and a pragmatic approach. But she hasn’t always succeeded.
Late last year, Ms. Lujan Grisham temporarily barred people from carrying weapons in certain public spaces in Albuquerque, drawing the ire not only of gun rights groups, but also of New Mexico’s attorney general, a fellow Democrat, who said he opposed the order.
This year, Ms. Lujan Grisham has taken a different tack, pushing for a new law that would make it easier to commit more mentally ill people to treatments. She also wants to make sure that fewer defendants accused of serious crimes are set free by judges because they are deemed incompetent to stand trial.
Johana Bencomo, a progressive Democrat serving on the City Council in Las Cruces, New Mexico’s second largest city, said she considered the governor an ally because of her advocacy for immigrant rights. But she worries that the governor’s proposals on crime will lead to more mentally ill and drug-addicted people being arrested by the police and ending up in prison.
“We are going back to policies we know do not work,” she said.
Javier Martínez, the Democratic speaker of New Mexico’s House, said the legislature had also been working on a bill that would try to compel more mentally ill people into treatment. But equally important, he said, is vastly expanding mental health services.
The governor believes that she is offering a blunt assessment of one of New Mexico’s most serious problems, and maybe the nation’s.
“Is there a family in America who isn’t touched by mental health and the intersection of drug abuse?” Ms. Lujan Grisham said. “Is there? I don’t think so.”
Ms. Lujan Grisham hails from a prominent political family, whose members include judges, a congressman and a U.S. interior secretary. She projects a sense of noblesse oblige, but her version seems to be a slightly more western do-it-yourself ideal.
Ms. Lujan Grisham once invited a mother and a young child escaping domestic abuse to live with her and her daughters who were in elementary school at the time. She also invited a man in his 90s to live with her family after he was evicted from his home. “I said, ‘There are ground rules. You can’t hoard in your room, and you will shower,’” she recalled in an interview.
Before being elected governor in 2018, she worked as the state’s health secretary and the head of its agency on aging. She also served three terms in Congress.
When she was in Congress, Ms. Lujan Grisham returned from Washington to Albuquerque and found that her partner, who is now her husband, had brought home a homeless couple after they showed up at his auto body shop looking for work.
While the couple lived periodically in their house in Albuquerque, her congressional staff worked to find them space in a shelter and access to drug treatment. But the couple refused the services.
Ms. Lujan Grisham sees parallels with her state’s challenges. People living in encampments and disrupting communities cannot be allowed to live that way indefinitely, she said.
This summer, Ms. Lujan Grisham called a special legislative session to consider her proposals to address crime. But Democratic lawmakers, who hold a majority in the statehouse, said they needed more time to consider her measures. The session lasted less than a day.
Rebuffed by legislators in her own party, Ms. Lujan Grisham has traveled around New Mexico seeking support from their constituents.
Her first stop was the city of Las Cruces, known as a college town and a low-cost retirement haven in the southern part of the state.
“How many of you have been chased?” the governor asked a crowd of hundreds of people who packed a meeting in Las Cruces to discuss crime.
Several hands went up.
“How many of you have been chased by people with a weapon,” she asked.
Again, hands shot up.
Ms. Lujan Grisham said she had been approached by a man with a machete on the sidewalk outside a business in Albuquerque, even with her security detail present.
When the governor visited Las Cruces this summer, the city was still reeling from the murder of a police officer, Jonah Hernandez.
On Super Bowl Sunday this year, Officer Hernandez responded to a report of a trespasser behind a business.
When the officer arrived, he encountered Armando Silva, 29, in the parking lot.
Footage from the officer’s body camera shows how, in a split second, Mr. Silva was upon the officer stabbing him; it also recorded the officer’s screams.
In 2017, Mr. Silva was sentenced to three years in prison for assaulting his girlfriend and later cited for meth possession.
In an interview, Mr. Silva’s mother, Xochitl Hernandez, said her son had been prescribed medication for schizophrenia but often refused to take it. He told her he heard voices coming from the radio.
“There are really bad people out there, but my son was not one of them,” she said. “My son was suffering. That doesn’t excuse what he did. But we need more resources so we can get people off the streets.”
The body cam also captured the crack of gunfire. A young man who was carrying a firearm came upon the scene and shot and killed Mr. Silva. The man was not charged with a crime.
Police Chief Jeremy Story said allowing mentally ill people to roam the streets with no intervention is dangerous both to themselves and the community. Since Officer Hernandez’s murder, Mr. Story, like the governor, has been lobbying for new laws that would ensure that fewer cases are dismissed because of mental competency issues. “I will not let Jonah’s death be in vain,” Mr. Story said.
Donna Stryker, who helped found Businesses for a Safer Las Cruces, which began as a group of local businesses frustrated by crime, still becomes emotional when she recalls watching the body cam footage, which was released to the public.
She said she was “grateful” that the governor had made the trip to Las Cruces to discuss crime, but crime and homelessness have been a growing problem for years. “Now we are going to be tough on crime?” she said.
Officer Hernandez’s murder was a turning point for Las Cruces.
The City Council passed an ordinance in August that targets people who steal grocery carts to store their belongings.
The police argued that the new ordinance is an effective way to intervene with people on the streets who refuse services. Instead of going to jail for stealing a cart, a person can be sent to mental health or substance abuse treatment.
The governor said state lawmakers should take their cues from cities like Las Cruces.
“We are like the last place in America to say this is an unacceptable environment,” she said.
The post In New Mexico, a Democratic Governor Wants to Get Tough on Crime appeared first on New York Times.
