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Thursday, February 21, 2008

Editorial: Stats Needed For Whole Area

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    Determining crime trends in the East Mountains is a little more than an educated guess.
    With three counties and at least four law enforcement agencies covering the area east of Albuquerque to Edgewood, it's difficult to get a handle on what is going on. Crime statistics from Bernalillo, Santa Fe and Torrance counties are separated from each other and include numbers from the counties' respective metro areas. The New Mexico State Police also keeps its own numbers.
    Property owners, especially those who own businesses, have anecdotal evidence to suggest when there is more crime. If your place is broken into more often and you have to add more and more security measures, then there might be a problem.
    Law enforcement in the East Mountains, for the most part, does a good job of working together through mutual aid agreements. But the cooperation needs to go a step further and agencies need to work together on creating a statistical snapshot of the whole area— something the Albuquerque Police Department and many other urban police departments around the country do to target neighborhoods with crime problems.
    A criminal might break into businesses in Tijeras and then move east on Old Route 66 on a crime spree. We might never know that because of the numerous law enforcement jurisdictions along the way.
    Crooks don't adhere to jurisdictional lines and law enforcement should step up and work together to identify trends that affect all of us, across county and municipal lines.