In the final installment of our series taking a look at Albuquerque’s mayoral candidates, we hear from former Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White, who also served as the Chief Public Safety Officer for Albuquerque before stepping down after an incident involving his wife’s DWI stop. He is now the programming manager for KKOB News Radio, according to his LinkedIn profile.
White refused an interview with KUNM for this story and in fact hasn’t given many one-on-one interviews at all during his campaign, but KUNM has pulled some of his answers given in debates and mayoral forums to give a general view of his policies and positions.
On Oct. 15, during KOAT’s Mayoral Debate, White said crime will be a major focus for him if he gets elected on November 4th.
“I believe the fundamental role of government is to keep people safe,” White said, “and that's exactly the way that I will lead. I will hire a new chief of police, one who's a strong and inspirational leader, one that the officers can be proud of and one that the public can be proud of as well. We got to get back to proactive policing, where officers go out and they conduct traffic stops. When they're doing that, they're also getting people who are wanted for warrants, sometimes violent warrants. They're also looking at and finding people that are up to no good. We also have the command staff of the police department (that) is bloated, and it has 50 people in it, as the chief says. And so we need to reduce that and move those out into the streets where they can fight crime. And finally, I want to have a juvenile crime unit. We all know that our juvenile criminals, they're getting younger and they're getting more vicious, and we have to have a department and officers who are designed to meet that challenge.”
On Oct. 22, during KOAT’s mayoral roundtable discussion, he expanded on his thoughts on youth crime:
“Our juvenile code was designed for kids that packed lunches, not guns. And the victims — being one of those people that has had to knock on the door in the middle of the night to let a family know that their loved one was dead — that family doesn't care the age of the hand that squeezed the trigger,” white said. “They all yearn for justice. They yearn for accountability and they don't get it in New Mexico with our juveniles. Our DA Sam Bregman led the charge and the governor introduced sweeping legislation that would have addressed this epidemic of younger, more violent, vicious teens, some of them not even teens. And yet those calls went unanswered and here we are today, and so I will be that voice. I can explain to them firsthand what it's like to knock on that door, and so we must continue to try to get the legislature to change our juvenile code. One of the things I also like and I was involved in for a very long time, more about the prevention on the prevention side of it is the police athletic league it was such a great program and it worked so very, very well, you know, Danny Romero and Johnny Tapi and a lot of kids were involved in that program years ago, and it really was a very, very helpful program, and I'd like to, I'd like to see it come back again and and help.”
White said he has similar thinking when it comes to homelessness and housing at a forum hosted by the Commercial Real Estate Development Association on Sept. 30. In response to a question about how he would cut homelessness numbers, deal with encampments and what the city should do when people living on the streets refuse city services, White had this to say:
“We've spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the homeless, and what do we have to show for it? What we've learned over the last few years, the last eight years, is that homeless Whack-A-Mole doesn't work. You can't just push them to the other side of the street, and then at the end of the day they come back,” White said. “Listen, what we need to do — the laws are clear. You're not allowed to camp on our streets, on our sidewalks, or in our parks. And on the first day that I'm elected, we will go out and we will offer them those services. We will say you can either get in that van and go to the Gateway Center, or you can go to a shelter, or you can get arrested. It's not fair to the people and the businesses that have to live in these communities to have to compete with this.”
When it comes to immigration, White told the KOAT roundtable he thinks Albuquerque should be cooperating with federal agencies.
“I don't believe that Albuquerque should be a sanctuary city,” white said. “I've been very outspoken about this. We have enough criminals of our own, and let me explain to you what I'm talking about. I'm talking about people who are here in our country illegally, and who commit crimes. Those are the people (whose) information should be turned over to immigration. That was also called the Obama Secure Communities plan. It was no different. He said people that were here illegally that committed crimes should be turned over to ICE and let them make a determination on whether they should be deported or not. We're not talking about families. We're not talking about victims. We're not talking about witnesses. I want to make it very clear, we are talking only about people who are in our community — and remember these are people who are being charged with crimes like violent crimes, human trafficking, drug trafficking — they should be identified, that information should be given to immigration, and allow them to put that detainer on them. As I said, that's the Obama plan, and he called it ‘secure communities.’ And I would propose the same thing — how we did it 10 to15 years ago. We just had immigration inside the prisoner transport center and every single person — every single person — that went through was checked for their status.”
Election day is Tuesday November 4th, and early voting is already underway.
Support for this coverage comes from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
