ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – Albuquerque’s Hispano Chamber of Commerce is launching its own anti-crime initiative. It’s a website that allows users to filter crime statistics by their legislative districts.
The Hispano Chamber of Commerce hopes a new website will help lawmakers and the public visualize what crime is going on in their neighborhoods.
Board Member Steven Chavez explained, “We’re up to a point where it’s a pandemic, and we need to just make a change, and we need to try and help you know, our elected officials, in any way we can. Instead of pointing fingers, we decided we wanted to help them.”
Chavez also serves as the chair of the chamber’s anti-crime initiative. He said business owners are frustrated with the crime problem in our city. On Wednesday, the chamber presented its launch of a new website Crimestatsnm.org.
The data-driven website ranks each legislative district as either good, fair, moderate, severe, or critical, and it includes violent crime, property crime, theft, or drug-related crime.
You can filter the information by House district, Senate district, or zip code. The website breaks down the combined rate of crime as well as each category and how the district is doing compared to the other districts.
The website also brings up the representative or senator for that district with the option to contact them through a pre-written email encouraging them to support legislation addressing crime like the organized retail crime bill. According to the website, areas like Las Cruces, Albuquerque, and Gallup were all ranked critical.
Representative Patricia Lundstrom represents Gallup. She said she’s happy to see an initiative reporting crime stats in all areas of New Mexico and not just in the metro.
“For an Albuquerque initiative to be rolled out that includes my House district in Gallup, McKinley County, helps to legitimize that crime is statewide,” said Representative Lundstrom.
The chamber teamed up with a local software company, Real Time Solutions, to create the platform. Crimestatsn.org is already up and running, you just need to sign up with an email address to access it.
Moving forward, leaders hope to add a tab on the website where users can look at crime bills that the Hispano Chamber of Commerce is tracking and stay up to date on what legislation has been voted on.
