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Copyright © 2015 Albuquerque Journal

The Albuquerque Police Department investigated 28 homicides in 2014, the fewest in a year since at least 1990, according to police statistics.

It’s a stark decline for a department that in years past has worked, on average, a homicide per week.

APD investigated 56 homicides in both 2009 and 1995 and 70 in 1996, which were the highest annual homicide totals in the past 24 years. From 1995 through 1997, Albuquerque police investigated 178 homicides, according to APD statistics.

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The drop comes at a time when the city and New Mexico are receiving attention for violent crime rates.

In 2013, Albuquerque’s violent crime rate was 774 per 100,000 residents, according to statistics reported by local departments and compiled by the FBI. New Mexico’s was 597 per 100,000, both of which were well above the national average of 368 per 100,000. Violent crimes include murder, non-negligent homicide, robbery, rape and aggravated assault.

The reason for the decrease isn’t clear. Officials attributed it to several things, such as improved medical care, good police work, the success of social programs or, simply, that the bodies were found outside city limits.

APD Homicide Sgt. Liz Thomson gave much credit for the decrease in homicides to first responders outside of the police department and to emergency room personnel.

“People are the victims of violent crime at a high rate, but less people are dying as a result of their injuries,” she said. “It would be remiss not to acknowledge the medical intervention. … It seems to me that a lot people are recovering from injuries that we don’t expect them to survive.”

When there is a possible homicide – a case where someone has been shot, stabbed or suffered another critical injury – APD does a “violent crimes call out.” It generates the same response as a definite homicide. Thomson said there were a significant number of violent crimes call-outs in 2014 where the victim survived, though exact numbers were unavailable.

Dr. Steve McLaughlin, chairman of the emergency medicine department at the University of New Mexico Hospital, said the ER is the only Level 1 Trauma Center in the state – a distinction given based on the laboratories, operating rooms, surgeons and other resources available to deal with serious injuries at all times.

McLaughlin said the facility is constantly improving its practices but couldn’t say whether that has played a role in the decreasing number of murders in the city. “I think we’re doing better at treating trauma than we were three years ago,” he said. “Does that account for the decreasing number of murders? I just don’t know.”

Mayor Richard Berry credited the decrease in homicides to good police work and the success of programs aimed at addressing education, homelessness and addiction.

“We’re approaching (crime) from different ways and not just the reactive work of policing,” he said. “We’re taking a little bit of a different approach and trying to be more preventative.”

Outside of the city limits in Bernalillo County, however, homicides increased in 2014. The Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office investigated 12 homicides in 2014, Sgt. Aaron Williamson said. That was up from 10 the year before. In 2012, the department investigated six homicides and the year before that it worked four homicides.

Williamson said the small number of homicides the sheriff’s office investigated in 2011 and 2012 was more surprising than last year’s increase. Historically, he said, the sheriff’s office investigates about 10 to 12 homicides per year, and there have been years when it has handled 20.

“When we have years with six (homicides), we count our blessings and consider it to be a really good year as far as homicides go,” he said.

Of the 12 homicides the sheriff’s office worked in 2014, detectives solved all of them, Williamson said. From 2011 through 2013, the sheriff’s office solved 18 of the 20 homicides, or 90 percent of the cases, investigators previously said.

Albuquerque police solved 21 of the 28 homicides in 2014, or 75 percent. APD’s homicide clearance rate from 2009 through 2013 was 76 percent, according to police statistics.

The national homicide clearance rate hovers around 65 percent annually.

“Of course we hope to solve all of them,” Thomson said, adding that there is no statute of limitations on murder and charges could be brought in the future. “We hope to solve these and then, of course, our number will go up.”