Amid growing public pressure to address homeless encampments across the city, Mayor Tim Keller invited Police Chief Harold Medina to help develop a two-month plan with “like five moves in two months on the chess baord (sic)” to respond to the growing crisis. “Yes let’s plan we hammer the unhoused but be prepared for the next compliant (sic) we will hear,” Medina replied.
The text message exchange was captured and released in response to a public records request by local attorney Thomas Grover relating to the city’s practice of preserving text messages between senior city officials. The request included all text messages between the mayor and police chief through July 21, 2023. The city’s response included screen shots of longer text threads but did not include specific meta data showing the date of the messages.
Over time, the city’s response to homelessness has become more assertive and prompted complaints and legal actions accusing the city of harassing and targeting the unhoused camped in public places. This is the first time internal conversations between the mayor and police chief about that change in strategy have been publicly disclosed.
The tone of the messages raised concerns from one city councilor and prompted a call for the police chief’s firing from the attorney representing several unhoused persons whose case led to an injunction prohibiting enforcement of some city ordinances frequently used against the unhoused until adequate shelter or housing resources are available.
Asked for comment and additional details on the messages, a spokesperson for the mayor provided a brief statement: “We continue to balance enforcing laws against illegal activity to keep our communities safe, and providing resources for people experiencing homelessness to both get them connected to services.”
Not a new problem
Homeless encampments are not a new problem for the City of Albuquerque, or most major cities across the country.
In October 2021, the city published a 17-page “Policy for Responding to Encampments on Public Property.” It was updated in October 2022.
The policy does not include police in the standard response for encampments, except those involving deemed “Priority 1” where felony crimes are observed. In a section titled, “Coordinating with APD,” city employees may request APD in limited circumstances, which “may include, but is not limited to, situations in which the resident(s) of the encampment refuses to cooperate with the removal of the encampment after the appropriate notice period has passed or threatens the safety and security” of city staff.
According to the policy, city workers would give notice to encampments and schedule removal if residents did not vacate public spaces.
But in the first eight months after the policy was published, the city was selectively enforcing it and ignoring growing camps in some public parks including Coronado Park near 12th Street and I-40.
“We will hold the line and be much more assertive“
By July of 2022, the park contained an estimated 120 persons and their belongings. Citing more than 400 police calls for service and several high profile crimes, including at least 1 homicide involving residents of the park, Keller called Coronado Park “the most dangerous place in New Mexico” and announced that the city would evict all of the residents in August.
“We will hold the line and be much more assertive when it comes to enforcing our laws where there are real safety issues and in places where youth programming is happening,” Keller stated in his State of the City address in July 2022.
Though the city has not provided the exact date the messages were exchanged between the mayor and chief, the private text message exchange is consistent with public statements made at the time about developing a new plan for dealing with unhoused camps.
Preparing for a new strategy in mid-2022, which included the closing of the park, Keller says he convened department directors to develop new strategies. “After we decided in the late spring to revisit our policies to think about what the long term future is for Coronado Park, I got all our directors together, including our police department… And we had a long discussion, over several weeks… and there was unanimous agreement that this park has to close.”
But he acknowledged at the time that the city had not established a full plan for what to do after the closure. “It is not going to be something where every question is answered, and every plan is thought out… We do not have the luxury of a perfect plan.”
When the park was finally closed in August 2022, city officials said just over 70 former residents had requested services. The rest were simply evicted with what they could move. The city promised that “encampment teams” guided by the policy and made up of city employees from multiple departments including APD and the Solid Waste Department would “enforce rules in the area so that the surrounding sidewalks and areas with children’s programming, like nearby Wells Park, are kept safe and clear.”
In December, the New Mexico Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the New Mexico Center for Law and Povery, along with attorneys Nick Davis and the Ives & Flores law firm, filed a lawsuit on behalf of 8 homeless persons claiming the city had “initiated a campaign in which City personnel hound and harass unhoused people so they have no place to go; citing, arresting, or threatening to cite or arrest them simply for sleeping outdoors with their meager belongings, and then seizing and destroying the few belongings people who are unhoused do have.”
In a court order effective last November, District Court Judge Josh Allison issued an order preventing the city from threatening to remove homeless persons from public property or seizing or destroying their property, unless the situation creates a public danger.
In his initial findings of fact justifying the injunction, Judge Allison found that the city had “enforced, or threatened to enforce, various ordinances and statutes criminalizing homeless persons’ mere presence in outdoor spaces.” He also called the city’s actions “improper enforcement of these statutes and ordinances.” The city has appealed that decision to the New Mexico Supreme Court.
“People have looked for other locations, but the city continues to sweep unhoused people from wherever they land, making it impossible for people to settle anywhere,” the petitioners wrote in the initial filing. One petitioner told the court “ they were followed by police and other City personnel and told that they could not stay wherever they tried to go.” One plaintiff and her husband were cited or arrested at least 3 times by police following their eviction from a city park, the lawsuit alleges.
The mayor, meanwhile, insists city departments have been instructed to follow the order. But a recent investigation by the Albuquerque Journal uncovered video of city workers forcing unhoused persons from public spaces without notice and “city workers and police give out conflicting information” to the unhoused.
“Hammer the unhoused”
A screenshot of a text exchange between Mayor Tim Keller and APD Chief Harold Medina shows the two discussing “moves” and “plans” relating to the unhoused. The date of the exchange is not included in the messages but they were provided in response to a request for messages between the two prior to July 21, 2023.
In the exchange, the mayor tells Medina that he wants to map out a two-month plan with “like five moves in two months on the chess baord (sic)… not just one at a time.”
In response, Medina suggests creating a plan to “hammer the unhoused” even though he anticipates that it will draw complaints: “Yes let’s plan we hammer the unhoused but be prepared for the next compliant (sic) we will hear. Let me think”
The exchange was a part of an ongoing thread between the mayor and chief and included unrelated matters. In the thread section viewed by City Desk ABQ, the mayor did not respond to the chief’s “hammer the unhoused” text and the next conversation was on an unrelated topic.
Reached for comment about the text exchange, attorney Laura Schauer Ives who represents the unhoused plaintiffs against the city, raised concerns and called for the firing of the police chief:
“The Keller Administration has repeatedly and falsely represented to the courts and to the public that they are just applying their criminal ordinances to serve public safety and cleanliness, when in fact this is a coordinated effort at the highest levels of city government to punish the most vulnerable people in the city.
That the Chief of Police would present a plan to “hammer the unhoused” to Mayor Keller during a housing crisis, where people cannot help but to be outdoors, and characterize it as a chess move without being immediately fired and replaced by the mayor should cause everyone in Albuquerque to question Mayor Keller’s leadership. Instead of looking for real solutions that would help unhoused people and improve our community as a whole, the administration has chosen cruelty.”
Laura Schauer Ives, plaintiff’s attorney
City Councilor Tammy Fieblekorn told City Desk she wanted to learn more information about the exchange before passing judgment. “I’m sure there is more to this exchange than what can be understood in this text excerpt. I certainly hope the point here was that the City would focus on homeless encampment clean ups for several months in a concerted way to clean up a certain area of town while providing needed services to each person they encountered. But, let me be clear: Under no circumstances should the City ‘hammer the homeless’. These are our most disadvantaged neighbors and the City should be helping, not hammering.”
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