At a May meeting Las Cruces business owners voiced their concerns over what they say is an increase in property crime and public safety concerns affecting the area. According to Mike Fraembs from Arista Development, after the price of lumber skyrocketed earlier in the year construction sites have turned into miniature gold mines for opportunistic thieves.
“Over the last year and a half, it has been extremely more problematic, especially in the framing stage of development. We have had tons of OSB theft a lot of other builders have had appliances stolen from almost completed houses so it has been throughout the whole stage of construction,” said Fraembs.
According to FBI crime statistics, Las Cruces had over 3,500 instances of property crime per 100,000 people compared to the national average of just over 2,000 in 2019. In a 2020 Annual Police Report, Las Cruces property crimes increased by 23% compared to the prior year.
“The investment in security, I would say we have probably spent around $5000 to $8000 dollars this year but the amount of goods that have actually been stolen within a 12-month period has been at least $60,000. I have talked to some volume builders and they are estimating $300,000-$400,000 in material lost,” said Fraembs.
With these crimes negatively impacting many local businesses, people are pointing blame at New Mexico’s bail reform. In 2016, New Mexico voters overwhelmingly supported the amendment to the New Mexico State Constitution which almost entirely eliminated cash bail in an effort to create a fairer judicial system and address the steady rise in incarceration.
“The Bail Reform Act is basically a catch and release program so people doing these lower property crimes are getting caught and booked. Chief Dominguez (LCPD) said that some people have been arrested fourteen times since February,” said Fraembs.
LCPD Officer Brian Klimeck says that once a suspect is turned over to detention and jail officials, their policies take over.
“Once we drop them off at the jail we are out of the picture. We don't get back into the picture until pretrial interviews or maybe down the road at a trial or something like that. Once they are turned over to the detention center, their rules and policies and court procedures take over as far as when they will be released," said Klimeck.
While many calls are directed towards city officials to be tougher on crime and make it harder for people to be released, the city government does not have the authority to make these changes since it was a state decision. With that being said, some on the city council are calling for a more comprehensive approach to addressing crime. Las Cruces City Councilor Johana Bencomo said that anti-poverty programs may help reduce crime.
“The truth is that if there is anything this country is good at it is incarcerating people and putting people in jail that is the thing we have continuously done and here we are. We need to find more transformative ways to get to the root of the problem which in my opinion is poverty. If we want to get serious about crime we have to get serious about poverty and people have access to mental health services,” said Bencomo.
Councilor Johana Bencomo says she is optimistic about programs such as a special crisis intervention team to respond to mental health issues as well as investing in high crime and high poverty neighborhoods to stop the issue early.
“That has taken the distressed community index and looks at layers within neighborhoods that looks at unemployment rates, poverty rates, crime rates and honing in on a specific area and investing in that area through better lighting, better streets, parks whatever makes the community more healthy and whole,” said Bencomo.
While these solutions are aimed at lowering crime rates, some like Mike Fraembs says he hopes these policies may bring lower prices to an expensive housing market.
“Theft gets transferred over to the purchase of the home so we are having to up our estimates to account for that. And what's sad about that is with prices going up it is filtering out local Las Cruces residents and we are having to rely on people from larger municipalities moving in to afford these houses,” said Fraembs.
Crime may be a layered issue. Poverty and a lack of healthy opportunities may create a pipeline to theft and vandalism that can in turn hurt business owners and local citizens. While many options are in the works, only time will tell how crime in Las Cruces is affected.
