This week, New Mexico in Focus explores the future for the Albuquerque Police Department, now that an 11-year, federally mandated reform effort has ended.

Police Chief Harold Medina strikes a reassuring tone, telling NMiF host Nash Jones: “We’re not going back to where we were... We’ve built a strong department that has accountability, that believes in constitutional policing and that is lowering crime.”

Albuquerque City Councilor Nichole Rogers acknowledges that the city’s legislative branch must now play a larger role in ensuring accountability.

Albuquerque-based civil rights lawyer Mark Fine also returns to talk about some of the under-discussed benefits of the reform effort — with transparency at APD topping that list.

NMIF concludes with Steve and Renetta Torres, who lost their son, Christopher, in 2011 when two plainclothes APD detectives jumped a wall into the family’s back yard and shot him three times in the back. “There’s strength in numbers,” Renetta Torres tells Executive Producer Jeff Proctor about the couple’s decade-and-a-half fight for change.

NMiF airs on NMPBS 5.1 (KNME HD) on Friday, May 30, at 7 p.m. and Sunday, June 1 at 7 a.m. and streaming on the PBS video app. ​  

Host
Nash Jones

NMiF Segments
APD Chief Medina: Department Is ‘Not Going Back’
Correspondent
Nash Jones

Guest
Harold Medina, Chief, Albuquerque Police Department

City Councilor Says Legislative Branch Must Hold APD Accountable
Correspondent
Nash Jones

Guest
Nichole Rogers, Albuquerque City Councilor, District 6

Civil Rights Lawyer on Maintaining the ‘Scaffolding’ for Reform
Correspondent
Jeff Proctor

Guest
Mark Fine, Civil Rights Lawyer

APD Shooting Victim’s Parents Offer Message to Other Families
Correspondent
Jeff Proctor

Guests
Renetta and Steve Torres, son Killed by APD in 2011

New Mexico in Focus is the New Mexico PBS prime-time news magazine show covering the events, issues, and people shaping life in New Mexico and the Southwest. NMiF takes a multi-layered look at social, political, economic health, education, and art issues and explores them in-depth with a critical eye to give them context beyond the "news of the moment."

NMPBS Executive Producer, Public Affairs, is Jeff Proctor. New Mexico in Focus's senior producer for public affairs is Lou DiVizio. “Our Land” Senior Producer is Laura Paskus. The producer of New Mexico in Focus is Antonio Sanchez, and co-producer is Kathy Wimmer.

Funding for New Mexico in Focus is provided by the McCune Charitable Foundation and Viewers Like You.

Funding for the Your New Mexico Government Project comes from the Thornburg Foundation and New Mexico Local News Fund.

The Neeper Natural History Programming Fund for KNME-TV provides funding for Our Land: New Mexico’s Environmental Past, Present & Future.