APD chief meets with other police chiefs on department issues, staffing

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Albuquerque Police Department Chief Harold Medina met with police chiefs from all over the country in Dallas last week. He said other police departments are facing similar issues.

“New York talked about their shortage, Dallas talked about their shortage,” Medina said about staffing shortages.

Albuquerque also isn’t the only city with a high homicide count.

“There’s very few agencies seeing a reduction in homicides, and a lot are still seeing increases in homicides,” Medina said.

The homicide count is at 105 right now, according to Chief Medina. This time last year, the count was 92.

There were other issues that the departments were also facing, as well.

“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, a lot of agencies are seeing that they’re getting these false calls,” Medina said.

Medina was talking about false calls of shots fired at schools.

After meeting with chiefs from around the country, Medina said he has some big takeaways he wants to try out.

“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,” Medina 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.”