The New Mexico Business Coalition (NMBC) is vowing to sue the City of Albuquerque for failing to take legal action against the petty and sometimes violent crimes allegedly committed by transients and vagrants.
“Albuquerque is absolutely out of control as far as crime wise and lack of policing,” said Aaron Jones, founder of the armed security company International Protective Service. “Unfortunately, organizations like mine are having to fill a major void in this city.”
Filing the lawsuit is on hold, however, while the NMBC raises money to fund the litigation.
“If we don't do something, we're not going to continue to exist the way we have so something has to change, and that's what we do in a civilized society is file lawsuits instead of storming federal buildings,” Jones told the New Mexico Sun. “We do things civilly. We try to take issues to a court of law and try to get change. That's the civil way of doing things.”
The city of Albuquerque is reportedly justifying its lack of action using an interpretation based on the U.S. Constitution's Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, in Martin vs. City of Boise, according to Carla Sonntag, NMBC president and CEO.
Martin vs. City of Boise held that cities cannot enforce anti-camping ordinances when they do not provide enough beds for their homeless population in shelters.
But the law firm NMBC plans to hire has already won a landmark decision in Arizona defeating the 2018 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling.
“A lot of these vagrants have come in across the border, and they're just living off the land along with people who should probably be in mental institutions and they’re not,” Jones said in an interview. “If the government is not taking care of them, then they're on the street corners begging for money.”
The Southwest Journal ranked Albuquerque as No. 8 in a top 20 listing of the most dangerous cities nationwide. In 2023, Albuquerque reported 12.4 homicides and 1,127.7 violent crimes per 100,000 residents.
“It's been going on for the last few years, but it's definitely gotten worse in the last four,” Jones said. “Definitely, COVID brought a lot more crime on because basically people could cover their faces and act with impunity in committing crimes. We literally had people in broad daylight breaking into buildings.”
Jones has since noticed a 40% increase in the number of Albuquerque businesses that have contacted him about onboarding private armed security guards.
"These retail stores now have a backbone in us when they confront people for theft or anything that they confront them for," Jones said. "When these people get violent and pull weapons or whatever, that's where we come into play. We're there to basically step in as the heavies or quasi-law enforcement to interact in worst-case scenarios."