LAS CRUCES, New Mexico (KTSM) — New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham was in the City of Crosses on Thursday, July 25 hosting a town hall meeting to discuss the issues of public safety.
“I was doing a lot of these kinds of town halls on a number of issues around 2019. And actually I started some of those roundtable discussions about the economy and public safety and education and a number of things right here in Las Cruces, and then COVID and fires and floods and all relatively hard to deal with. But nonetheless, it’s been too long since we’ve had just a public discussion,” Lujan Grisham said.
That was Lujan Grisham’s opening statement, as she addressed a packed and lively house, with the meeting running several minutes late to accommodate the large turnout.
The meeting ran well over three hours long. People across different walks of life described their experiences surrounding crime and the dangers of their everyday lives.
The governor addressed their concerns and discussed an array of topics and issues, but the recurring theme was crime and how it correlates to people with behavioral and mental issues being released back into the streets.
“Since 2017, more than 16,000 cases have been dismissed in New Mexico courts for competency,” Lujan Grisham said.
The governor said over 3,000 of them are released after committing “very dangerous felonies,” such as rape, attempted murder, drug and human trafficking.
Lujan Grisham explained the issue, adding that they’re released by judges because they’re deemed incompetent to stand trial before a judge.
She said this is a good standard in the legal process. Otherwise they would just prosecute people unfairly, but the problem she said is that people with mental health issues are released back into the streets without getting treatment.
“How many of you in this audience believe that somebody with a severe drug addiction and/or mental illness is all better and ready to go in seven days after being in the hospital? Raise your hand if you think that can work. Well, that is what the state of New Mexico, under the current laws, thinks is helping. It is not,” Lujan Grisham said.
The New Mexico Legislature recently completed a one-day special session on public safety in which they did not consider any of the governor’s proposals, according to multiple New Mexico news outlets.
Lujan Grisham said she “welcomed creative solutions,” and talked about what she’s trying to do to address the issue.
“There are actually two bills: commitment and competency. It gives judges the tools to give people who are, frankly, extremely dangerous and repeat felons. It gives them a tool to do something about it. The only tool they have now is to have them right back in the community,” she said.
She spoke with our KTSM crews ahead of the meeting about what the goal of the meeting was.
“We cannot have people who are both dangerous to themselves and dangerous to others in a situation where they’re not getting fair, constitutionally sound mandated treatment. So I am going to talk about that tonight. Because we have a chance in New Mexico to change those laws,” Lujan Grisham.
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