ABQ Times

The situation at the Metropolitan Detention Center is bad and getting worse.

An order approved last week by the Bernalillo County Commission to address low staffing and other issues inside the MDC will likely have little impact if the situation continues its current course. There are simply not enough correction officers to guarantee everyone’s safety, according to a KOB report.

"It’s getting to be beyond frustrating for everyone, inmates included,” Joseph Trujeque, the president of Local 2499, the Corrections Officers Association told KOB. “I mean they’re paying an ultimate price as well as the officers. It’s insulting. And I think it’s insulting to every officer that works at MDC.”

Among the initiatives suggested by the County Commission is to hire 13 full-time officers within six months and a total of 111 over two years.  But Trujeque pointed out that 10 officers resigned from their jobs in the last three weeks. “How’s thirteen officers going to make a difference in six months?” Trujeque told KOB 4.

The order approved last week also calls for implementing rules for tracking the time inmates are out of their cells and improving cell call buttons. But there is not enough staff to handle those duties, Trujeque said.

In an unprecedented move, New Mexico’s chief public defender Bennett Baur told Commissioners he instructed his attorneys and staff not to visit clients at the detention center because of safety concerns. “I don’t think anybody would’ve foreseen two years ago,” Baur said.  “Ultimately as a community we need to make sure MDC only holds as many persons as it can ethically and humanely hold.”

Robert Mason, a sergeant with the MDC, said the environment is no longer safe and secure. “People are suffering to a level of cruel and unusual punishment,” Mason told the Commissioners. “People who are at high risk of dying due to detox or risk of suicide go without being watched. The solution we have been presented with is work more. We don’t have time to metabolize stress from day-to-day trauma. We go home, and just go right back to work.”