By Jeff Proctor
Albuquerque Journal
ALBUQUERQUE — A team of elected and law enforcement officials, community leaders, clergy and citizens assembled by a West Side neighborhood organizer hope 2009 will be the year - finally - that New Mexico gets tough on gangs.
“We have a lot of ideas on how to create a village, or community concept for how to deal with this state’s gang problem,” West Side Coalition President Dan Serrano said Tuesday. “It will take more than additional cops on the streets and building more prisons.”
The West Side Coalition of Neighborhood Associations sponsored a community forum on gangs last month. Serrano served as moderator.
Serrano’s plan was to use the forum as a springboard toward forming a task force that will craft legislation to toughen New Mexico’s gang laws.
Serrano now has his team in place that will push the “Gang Prevention Act of 2009" during the upcoming legislative session. Among those on the 21-member task force are: state Reps. Antonio “Moe” Maestas and Thomas Anderson, both of Bernalillo County; Albuquerque City Councilors Ken Sanchez and Brad Winter; Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White; Albuquerque Police Department gang unit officers; state gang specialists; a state District Court judge; and a representative from the YMCA.
Serrano and 13th Judicial District Attorney Lemuel Martinez, who represents Cibola, Valencia and Sandoval counties, will co-chair the task force. The group will meet, Serrano said, “hopefully very soon” to begin the work of determining legislative priorities.
Serrano said any legislation the group proposes will focus on a three-pronged approach to fighting gangs: suppression, intervention and prevention.
One bill the task force is sure to back is a proposal from Sheriff White and state Rep. John Ryan aimed at strengthening the state’s three-strikes law.
Under the current law, approved in 1994, defendants convicted three times of certain felonies receive a 30-year enhancement - considered a life sentence - to their prison term.
Those crimes include first- or second-degree murder; a drive-by shooting resulting in great bodily harm; kidnapping resulting in great bodily harm; armed robbery resulting in great bodily harm; and criminal sexual penetration.
The new proposal adds 13 crimes to the list, including voluntary manslaughter, firstdegree kidnapping and firstor second-degree robbery.
“If we don’t get the tough three-strikes law, maybe we can get something passed that if a gang member comes here from California hoping to find a safe haven in New Mexico, and he already has two strikes from California, those two strikes will carry over to here,” Serrano said. “Then maybe that gang member will think twice before he sets up shop in New Mexico.”
During past sessions, bills aimed at increasing penalties for gang members and gangrelated crimes have died at various stages of the legislative process.
But no one’s arguing with the fact that New Mexico has a gang problem.
Serrano has cited FBI statistics showing that the number of documented gangs statewide has gone from 230 to nearly 700 during the past decade.
The number of gang members has doubled to more than 13,000 statewide, the statistics show.
Efforts in the past few years - including making it a felony to recruit minors into gangs and adding years onto the sentences of criminals proven to be gang members - have failed in the past, DA Martinez said during last month’s gang forum.
Martinez pointed out that many gang members have migrated to New Mexico from California because of the perception that this state is a “safe haven” for gangs.
Rep. Maestas, who represents the West Side, said in an interview that the legislation hasn’t passed because many lawmakers view certain provisions as unconstitutional.
“The constitutional problem is with the fact that we have freedom of association in this country,” Maestas said. “Where are you going to get a witness besides the law enforcement officer who says: ‘He’s a gang member because I say he is?’”
“It’s not necessarily a legislative fix we need, but a relationship fix. APD needs to have a better relationship with the community; the DA’s Office needs to have a better relationship with the community. People don’t get convicted with stronger laws. They get convicted with a witness.”
Serrano said another of the task force’s primary goals will be to create a “statewide gang commission.”
“We hope to be able to consolidate and centralize the resources necessary to deal with the gang issue,” he said. “How do we pursue federal grants and other federal dollars? How do we begin to look at an accountability structure to deal with nonprofit and other community groups? How does law enforcement deal with the problem? What ammunition do the courts have to fight gangs?
“We need to have all these efforts and various parts working together.”
Copyright 2008 Albuquerque Journal