Albuquerque Police Department Chief Harold Medina returned from a conference in Dallas recently with the understanding that his department isn’t the only law enforcement agency facing difficult issues.
Medina gathered with police chiefs throughout the country to discuss issues such as the rise in crime, false calls, recruitment challenges and staff shortages.
“New York talked about their shortage, Dallas talked about their shortage,” Medina told KOB 4.
A rising homicide rate isn’t exclusive to Albuquerque either. Medina noted that there have been 105 homicides in the city as of last weekend, compared to 92 at this time last year. It mirrors what is going on in the rest of the country.
“There are very few agencies seeing a reduction in homicides, and a lot are still seeing increases in homicides,” he said.
Another issue is false calls of shots fired at schools, which occupy a department’s time and resources for no reason.
“I left to Dallas thinking it was something we’re going through in Albuquerque, and quickly learned after an hour and a half of this discussion that this is a trend that’s going around nationwide,” Medina said. “A lot of agencies are seeing that they’re getting these false calls.”
After conferring with other police chiefs, Medina left Dallas with a couple of plans to improve his department.
“We’re going to try to figure out how we could more frequently, internally, communicate stuff from the highest levels to lowest levels coming here,” he said. “We also learned about some new recruiting techniques. Sacramento is actually getting people to start a pre-academy, and they go through some of the steps of training and we’ve already looked into that.”
