Today, the anti-police rhetoric that was currency in the George Floyd era is a quaint reminder of the moral panic that overtook the Democratic Party.
Calling in the National Guard was likely the last thing New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham wanted to do. The city of Albuquerque didn’t give her a choice.
Although violent crime rates declined slightly in 2024 from their 2023 highs, Albuquerque police lacked the resources and manpower to maintain that momentum. Albuquerque Police Department (APB) chief Harold Medina’s five-page memorandum addressed to Grisham’s office warned that juvenile crime, in particular, and the general lawlessness that accompanied the fentanyl crisis had overwhelmed his force. They needed help.
So, on April 8, the governor signed an emergency declaration approving the deployment of between 60 and 70 National Guard troops to the city. “The situation in Albuquerque has reached an unacceptable crisis point,” Grisham said. “We simply cannot wait for traditional solutions to take effect.”
In an accompanying statement, Grisham stressed that National Guard personnel will not engage in the active policing of city residents. Rather, they would be tasked with reliving the APB’s logistical burdens, including controlling traffic, transporting prisoners, and providing security assistance, among other things. In addition, Guardsmen and women have been charged with making themselves as inconspicuous as possible. “The unarmed Guard members will wear polo shirts instead of fatigues and camouflage,” said NBC News’s reading of Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller’s statement on the upcoming deployment. “They will have limited interaction with community members and will not be driving military vehicles, officials said.”
Despite all this, the deployment scheduled for mid-May has led local activists to resurrect the forsaken rhetoric to which the Defund the Police movement once appealed.
“New Mexico already has one of the highest per capita rates of people killed by police in the nation,” said Daniel Williams, a policy advocate with the New Mexico branch of the ACLU. “History has shown that military collaboration with local law enforcement often leads to increased civil rights violations, racial profiling, and criminalization of vulnerable populations, particularly those experiencing homelessness and poverty.”
What is the supposition here? If APB officers aren’t tied up with paperwork, crowd management, and providing security at courts and airports, officers will spend more time shooting innocent civilians? “Increased policing always raises concerns for us about increased excessive force or increased civil rights violations or racial profiling,” Williams told NBC. Perhaps it “raises concerns” because a more proactive policing strategy increases the potential for violent interactions between cops and the population they’re policing. Of course, one doesn’t necessarily follow from the other. And there is the question of tradeoffs, which the activist set rarely acknowledges. A limited police presence will produce fewer engagements between law enforcement and civilians, but that doesn’t yield better outcomes for local residents. At least, not if you ask the residents.
Maybe the most unsatisfying argument against Grisham’s deployments found its way onto the pages of the New York Times: Her plan “has drawn uneasy comparisons to the talk of President Trump.”
“What’s the difference between Trump and the governor if they’re both rolling out the military?” asked one “longtime community organizer.” Perhaps because Grisham’s not unprecedented deployment of Guards to make up a shortfall of public employees in a time of crisis and Trump’s deployments to the border bear no resemblance, the Times apparently found no one else willing to support the premise its headline advertised.
Indeed, the media outlets tasked with drumming up opposition to a Democrat-led city’s appeal to the Democratic governor of a Democrat-dominated state came up short. “I think there are a lot of residents in my district who are very concerned about crime and I’m glad the National Guard is coming in a supportive role to help a troubled police department do its job effectively,” said Democratic State Senator Antoinette Sedillo Lopez in one illustrative example of the new political consensus on crime.
Times have changed. Five years ago, the paltry few who maintain a principled hostility toward the very concept of policework would have seen their ranks swell with opportunists and cowards. The governor would have been compelled by political necessity to reject the APB’s request for additional forces, if such a request could have been made at all. Today, the anti-police rhetoric that was currency in the George Floyd era is a quaint reminder of the moral panic that overtook the Democratic Party.