This is a serious problem in Santa Fe. It is more complex than it sounds, its not just libruls hiring “mexicans”. First, several years ago, they made it mandatory for new police officers to have 4 year college degrees, plus the usual clean background. In New Mexico, that really limits your hiring pool..... Then after that, they pay new recruits $13.50 an hour, the same as most other areas in the state. But the cost of living is twice here than in Albuquerque or other parts of the state. Hell, most of the cops we do have on the force can’t afford to live here, they comute from Albuquerque. Add to that wacky socialist mayors, corrupt local politicians, who spend their time thinking of ways to fill their own pockets or thinking of “impeaching Bush” or global warming, and they don’t give a rats ass about crime going up. The mayor is blaming the chief of police for not hiring enough people. They hit their goal for new hires, but just as many quit as they hired in the past year, so nothing has changed. Somehow that is the cops fault and not the city coucil/mayor’s. Of course, if the people ever wake up and kick the losers out, they might change, but that won’t happen in the “city different”.....
The first thing I would do as mayor would be to jack up real estate taxes on all the multi-million dollar homes here owned by rich californians and texans (alot of hollywood types) and double the pay of the cops and increase their numbers.
Good grief!. Why not implement a city income tax as well?