More than 110 homicide victims were reported in Albuquerque this year, which broke all the records, city police say in a running tally they've been keeping on their website.
All told, 112 victims died in 108 homicides in the city this year, including the most recent, the Christmas Eve shooting death of a person sitting inside a car on the 500 block of Ortiz Drive Southeast, according to the tally.
University of New Mexico Sociology Professor Christopher Lyons
| sociology.unm.edu/
The deadliest months were January, April and June, with 14, 13 and 12 homicide victims respectively.
The record-breaking trend was noted more than halfway through the year in a KRQE news story published in late July, shortly after the city's 79th homicide occurred.
"We as a community need to recognize that we do have a record-breaking year of homicides," Albuquerque Police Department Chief Harold Medina said in the news story. "Last year was not a slow year. Last year was the second-highest year we had in homicides."
The rise in Albuquerque's homicides continued that record-breaking trend through the rest of the year.
Albuquerque's homicides this year account for more than half of the entire state’s annual homicide rate, according KRQE, which cited data from the FBI.
The Albuquerque Police Department says higher numbers of homicides are being reported in the city but that it's following similar trends across the country this year.
"It's been a tough year," Medina told reporters at a Nov. 8 news conference. By that time, Albuquerque had reported its 96th homicide of the year. "This is a nationwide trend," Medina said. "We are falling in line with a lot of the other major, big cities."
Historically, homicides have occurred most often in the parts of Albuquerque with high levels of guns, segregation and poverty, University of New Mexico Sociology Professor Christopher Lyons told the station.
Homicides generally are "concentrated in communities that have chronically high levels of firearm violence, disparities, racial and ethnic disparities, segregation, underemployment, poverty," Lyons said. "It's similar populations, it's similar locations in Albuquerque every year."