Enchantment State News

The Albuquerque Police Officers’ Association has announced it is not in favor of the Defund Police movement sparked by George Floyd’s death last month.

“Any politician whether they're local or national that is on board with defunding the police is ignorant, pandering and not talking about the conversation,” Albuquerque Police Officers' Association President Shaun Willoughby told KOAT.

The police union states the Albuquerque Police Department (APD) is already underfunded so reallocating funds to other community programs wouldn’t make much of a difference to the department.

“We've been understaffed here for the last 10 years, we're fighting to get to a level just to respond to the needs of the community,” Willoughby told KOAT. “Police are a conduit to everything, and they're a conduit to a lot of things that society hasn't really done very good management of in general, it always comes back to the police.”

The police union also doesn’t agree with defunding as the APD, unlike other departments in the country, has being committed to making changes.

“Being six years into a reform effort, with the Department of Justice and a monitoring team, and the literal millions, upon millions of dollars that this communities tax base has invested into reform, it doesn't make a lot of sense,” Willoughby told KOAT.

Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller said among the things APD has been focused on includes having unarmed officers deal with certain situations, according to KOAT.

“If you look at things we've been doing like trying to decriminalize the interaction between civilians and law enforcement, we're actually trying to have a social worker show up rather than an officer, in that regard we've been defunding for a while,” Keller told KOAT.

In addition to unarmed officers, APD is looking into implementing programs related to restorative justice and violence intervention.