APD stats show increase in shootings with police

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – The latest deadly police shooting comes hours before the police department released some surprising statistics on how often officers are shooting at suspects. 

According to the Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina, this latest shooting is the 50th time a law enforcement agent shot at someone statewide.

Medina says he expects these types of shootings to only increase. He says these shootings have continued to increase nationwide since the pandemic. 

“The reason we’re doing this today is– I was here in 2014, and I firsthand saw what strain between the community and the police department brought a lot of that strain was revolving around officer involved shootings,” he said.

An APD officer has shot at someone 17 times this year – more than any recent years.

“17 is higher than even pre DOJ numbers,” Medina said.

There have been 54 officer involved shootings since 2018 – seeing a dramatic increase in 2022.

“I don’t want there to be this perception that officers are out there just being involved in excessive force when they don’t have to, you know, the data is showing our officers are encountering more and more armed subjects on a daily basis,” said Medina. 

The data from APD shows 85% of the people shot by police had a gun, that’s 45 people since 2018, and of those 45 APD says 30 of them fired back. 

Medina says the data shows three main drivers for these types of shootings:

• Officers pursuing a suspect 
• Suicide by cop
• Drugs or alcohol leading to bad decisions

Medina says the department is always working to better its training and policies on these matters, and says he wants to bring the community in on the conversation. 

“That’s part of who we want to become in the culture– we want to have here, we want to listen and work with the community,” Medina said. 

The reason the data police released only goes back to 2018 is because that’s when they changed their data system over to be compliant with the federal crime stat data collection system.

The ACLU released a statement Thursday, saying they were disturbed by these shootings:

“The high rates of police violence in Albuquerque and across the state call for increased accountability and transparency as we address the excessive uses of force that are gravely affecting our communities.”

They also called on APD to develop responses that will give people the help they need.