The Albuquerque Police Department is the most violent in the country
Despite a population of less than 600,000, Albuquerque, New Mexico, nonetheless has a rate of police-involved shootings that is twice that of Chicago and eight times that of New York City. In the last four years alone, Albuquerque police have killed 27 people and shot another 40 who survived with injuries.
"There's no accountability here. There's no justice. There's no respect. There's no humanity here. There's nothing," said Mike Gomez, whose mentally ill son was killed by Albuquerque cops while armed with nothing more than a spoon. "It's so disgusting that they get away with it."
An investigation by the Department of Justice this year concluded that the Albuquerque police have "shot and killed civilians who did not pose an imminent threat of serious bodily harm or death to the officers or others" in a pattern of "unconstitutional use of deadly force."
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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