It could be a tale of two cities as businesses and residents of Farmington’s Animas District have pleaded for help managing homeless people while also having learned to live with individuals who suffer from the impacts of homelessness, addiction and crime.
Fifteen residents brought a petition to the city of Farmington seeking assistance, and the city answered with an informational meeting at the Sycamore Park Community Center on Sycamore Street in south Farmington on Thursday.
During the meeting, Farmington Police Deputy Chief Nate Lacey said his department began developing initiatives after a June 2024 meeting with concerned business owners.
Crime along the Broadway and Scott Avenue corridor was rampant and public safety concerns were raised about inebriated individuals wandering the streets, passing out in roadways and committing criminal acts.
“The situation was worse two years back,” said Murad Mohsin, owner of the Wingate Wyndham, located at 601 East Broadway.
Mohsin spoke to the Tri-City Record on July 31, saying “the problem is the high liquor sales.”
There are two Speedways in the Broadway corridor, and both sell liquor.
“Our one unending challenge is alcohol,” Police Chief Steve Hebbe said during the meeting. “I am not a teetotaler, and I am not preaching prohibition.”
Hebbe pointed out that a person can’t buy cigarettes without asking the clerk, but alcohol has been kept in the open.
“Alcohol is sitting there. They walk in, and steal the heck out of it,” he said. “Security stands back and watches the subject leave with stolen alcohol. Then that’s out on our streets.”
Thefts typically have not been reported, but the alcohol consumption has led not only to crime, but also addiction.
“The police are not going to be able to arrest their way out of inebriates on the street,” Hebbe said. “The city, the county and the hospital are paying a million dollars a year for those offenders.”
Many of the individuals who drink, then commit other crimes by preying on unhoused individuals, who have nowhere else to go.
Jimmy Begay, 63, of El Paso, Texas, told the Tri-City Record he feels safe in Farmington.
Begay, who has been homeless for just over two weeks sat with his friend JD Barney, of Lukachukai, Arizona, sharing conversation and a Pepsi as they tried to stay cool on Friday in the shade of the Dollar Tree building on Broadway.
“The reason I came up here is I lost my sister,” Begay said. “I got stuck here because of money.”
Begay has been wandering Farmington’s streets and said he gets food from local churches. His greatest difficulty has been the constant movement.
“If the police see you on the sidewalk, they tell you to keep moving,” Begay said, adding he has not been welcome in public parks. “Why is it public if we can’t hang out? We’ve got to keep on moving all over.”
Barney told the Tri-City Record that he is “older than the speed limit — 58.”
He has enjoyed riding his bike around town, and he came to Farmington for freedom.
“I just wanted to get away. I’m not homeless. I have a house on the other side of the mountain,” Barney said. “We’re not trouble. You have to be civil with everybody.”
Barney said he wasn’t worried about becoming a victim of crime, because “you gotta be nice for people to be nice to you.”
Begay added that he has found help from churches and others in the community.
Services do exist, but people have to be willing to accept the help they are offered, Hebbe said.
One form of assistance is the Alternative Response Unit buses, which began operating in 2019 through the Farmington Fire Department.
The buses respond to individuals who are in crisis, perhaps passed out on the sidewalk or suffering from the negative effects of alcohol. Residents can call dispatch at (505) 334-6622 to ask for the bus to provide assistance.
“If you see someone passed out on the street, as a community we should call and report it to dispatch,” Doug McNeely, of Farmington, said during the meeting.
Farmington Fire Deputy Chief Tom Miller said as of Wednesday more than 24,000 individuals have been transported to the sobering center.
“That is not against their will. That is completely voluntary,” he said.
If someone is drunk or high on drugs but not breaking the law, the police cannot incarcerate them, and in Farmington there are no “protective custody units” where someone can be held for 72 hours while they sober up, Hebbe said.
“It is a major flaw in our system and inhibits our ability to deal with our inebriate population,” he said, adding that a protective custody unit would save lives.
Hebbe said he hopes to have a protective custody unit up and running soon, but for now there is the sobering center.
Hebbe said he has directed his staff to develop an overall strategy to combat crime that results from addiction. This has been accomplished not only identifying repeat offenders but developing partnerships to help people get clean.
“These are people who have gotten used to being arrested – they’ve gotten used to going to jail,” Hebbe said, adding there are flaws in New Mexico’s criminal justice system that enables bad behavior.
One such law removed the bail system, and in a 2014 New Mexico Supreme Court ruling, the justices said that holding a person in jail because they do not have bail money was unconstitutional.
This created a revolving door of offenders, who are repeatedly arrested and released, sometimes leading to more violent criminal behavior, Hebbe said.
He spoke of an incident in April in which four individuals died.
“Whether they were a victim or a suspect – they had been in jail and were released,” he said. “Within days of being arrested they stabbed somebody to death, they were killed or they stumbled out into traffic and were killed.”
Hebbe developed a partnership with the county to incarcerate repeat offenders at the 28-day DWI Treatment Center that provides in-house treatment for addiction.
The police department also created a prolific offenders list to easily identify the repeat offenders, with the names of 30 people who have committed the most crimes in the city, Lacey said.
“The top 30 had been arrested over 300 times in past two years. Occasionally, there was violent crimes against other people,” Lacey said, adding the department has a dedicated officer tracking these individuals to assist with prosecutions and sentencing by going “to the judge and saying this person is repeatedly committing crimes and has a propensity for violence.”
Lacey said proactive policing included identifying “hot spots” of criminal activity and “even when we are busy we are working to carve out times with dedicated officers” to patrol those areas.
“We are pulling people from different parts of the department. We are putting a supervisor in charge of that and give them a narrow directive to patrol,” Lacey said. “We are doing some of that in the Animas District.”
Since the initial meeting in 2024, Lacey said officer-initiated calls for service in the Animas District increased by 23%.
Arrests increased from 1,664 to 1,851, Lacey said.
The “officers are down in that area proactively contacting people,” Lacey said. “Our officers are engaging in this, wanting to get out there and stay active.”
Lacey added, “I won’t stand up here and say the problem is solved,” but the department continues “to strategize and see what they can work on in that area.”
“Let’s fight crime, let’s try to reduce crime in the areas where we are finding it,” Lacey said.
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