Are ABQ’s mental health & violence interventions working?

Since 2019, the City of Albuquerque has leaned hard into some alternative efforts toward addressing the complexities behind two major issues plaguing the city: violent crime and mental/behavioral health. In November 2019, city leaders announced the launch of the "Violence Intervention Program," or VIP for short. The program connects streetwise social workers to victims of gun violence in an effort to stop the cycle of retaliation.

About six months later, in June 2020, Albuquerque announced the launch of the "Albuquerque Community Safety Department," or ACS. The agency uses unarmed social workers to respond to mental health crises and other non-emergency calls where police and firefighters aren't needed, or could be seen as possibly escalating the situation.

While each program started independent of each other, they now work in tandem to broadly address trauma and hardship outside of the law enforcement mechanism. The VIP program has also since moved under the umbrella of ACS.

This week on the podcast, Chris and Gabrielle are asking if Albuquerque's intervention efforts are working. Two city workers, Walter Adams and Angel Garcia join the podcast this week to discuss the programs efforts. Adams is a Behavioral Health Responder Supervisor with ACS, while Garcia is a Social Services Manager with Albuquerque's VIP effort.

How many people are being helped by ACS and VIP? Are these programs preventing violence or saving lives? What's ahead in 2023? And how do these programs work? These questions and more get answered in this week's episode.

As mentioned early in the episode, Gabby interviewed Walter Adams in 2022 about ACS. Here's a link to her investigative story.

Please leave us a rating or a review on whatever podcast app you use to listen to the NMNP. We'd also love to hear from you! Email Chris and Gabby at chris.mckee@krqe.com or gabrielle.burkhart@krqe.com. You can also find us on social media, including Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram at @ChrisMcKeeTV and @gburkNM. For more on this episode and all of our prior episodes, visit our podcast website: KRQE.com/podcasts.