I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
For the past 82 years, the Federal Bureau of Investigation — in its reporting of national crime statistics — has not recognized that men can be raped, that women can be raped by other women, that men and women can…
Several cities that planned to opt out of Secure Communities, an initiative that leads to illegal immigrant deportations, were surprised when federal officials announced the program was mandatory. But local officials aren’t about to give up.
Secretary of State Mary Herrera declined to respond to allegations made by three of her former staff members in an interview with The Independent on Friday, saying she hadn’t seen “the exact allegations.”
“I haven’t seen what they’re claiming.…
Two former aides to Secretary of State Mary Herrera who were fired this week will sue their former boss for retaliation under the state’s whistleblower act, their attorney said Wednesday. Herrera’s deputy, Francisco Trujillo II, denied that the two were fired for going to the FBI with allegations of wrongdoing by Herrera, but also declined to give another reason for the terminations, saying only: “It’s a personnel matter and I won’t go into it.”
Attorney General Gary King attempted to cover up allegations of wrongdoing by Secretary of State Mary Herrera to protect Democrats during an election year, an Española attorney charged Thursday. A spokesman for King said the charges amount to election-year mudslinging and are a product of the attorney’s imagination.
Homicides in Albuquerque spiked last year over 2008 numbers in part due to the discovery of 13 West Mesa victims buried in a mass grave, Albuquerque Police crime data show.
Other than that, violent crime in the city appears…
A 1978 report for Congress on the 1965 disappearance of more than 200 pounds of weapons-grade uranium from a nuclear plant in Apollo, Penn., has been declassified.
Investigators were unable to draw any firm conclusions because of stonewalling by…
The end of the U.S.-Mexico border fence in California (Photo by Bisayan lady/Flickr)
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer cited “border violence and crime due to illegal immigration” as motivations for signing a controversial law requiring people in Arizona to carry proof that they are in the U.S. legally.
But FBI and U.S. Department of Justice data show that Arizona’s violent crime rate is lower than the U.S. average and has been declining more rapidly than the U.S. average, The Independent found.
Despite a growing population, violent crime rates dropped sharply in Arizona between 2002 and 2008, the latest year for which complete federal crime data are available online.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, Arizona’s population-adjusted violent crime rate dropped from 555 reported incidents per 100,000 people in 2002 to 447 per 100,000 in 2008.
That 19.5 percent decline was much more pronounced than the U.S. average during the same time period, The Independent found.
Nationwide, the violent crime rate dropped by 7.9 percent, from 494 violent crimes per 100,000 population in 2002 to 455 in 2008, The Independent found.
New Mexico saw a 12 percent decline in violent crimes between 2002 and 2008, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics database.
But at nearly 650 violent crimes per 100,000 people in 2008, New Mexico’s crime rate was considerably higher than both Arizona’s and the U.S. average.
Reports by the nonpartisan Immigration Policy Center and libertarian CATO Institute both indicate crime rates fell in Arizona over the past decade.
Census data show that overall, immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born people, according to both institutes.
ICE officials did not return The Independent’s calls Monday, requesting illegal immigration statistics for New Mexico, Arizona and Texas.
An anti-government group sent a letter to Governor Bill Richardson urging him to leave office or be forced out, according to the FBI’s office in Albuquerque. Governors of both political parties across the nation have received the letters.
Foreign aid trickled into Haiti’s devastated capital on Thursday morning as survivors of Tuesday’s earthquake, many of them injured and homeless, woke to another morning with no electricity and dwindling water, to search for the missing and claim their…
Controversial Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio and former New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias are involved in a controversy related to an FBI investigation, Talking Points Memo highlights. Arpaio, known as “America’s toughest sheriff” is currently under investigation by…
Former U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson says there was an FBI inquiry into ties between her 2006 opponent, Patricia Madrid, and a political action committee as the two duked it out in one of the hottest congressional races in the nation that year. Ex-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias says there wasn’t.
Gov. Bill Richardson on Wednesday instructed State Investment Officer Gary Bland to initiate termination of SIC’s private equity advisor Aldus Equity Partners’ relationship with the state.
The decision comes after the FBI has questioned officials from two…
Gov. Bill Richardson is withdrawing his name for consideration as U.S. Commerce Secretary, citing a federal investigation into a California company being investigated by the FBI. A call by the Independent to the governor’s spokesman was not immediately returned.
The group that ran the largest voter-registration drive in the state this year told reporters today that safeguards already in place helped to identify many of the 1,400 cards the FBI is investigating as “potentially fraudulent.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has opened a preliminary probe into 1,400 “potentially fraudulent” voter registration forms in Bernalillo County, the Wall Street Journal is reporting. Bernalillo County Clerk Maggie Toulouse Oliver told the newspaper she had turned over the suspicious forms to law enforcement, and said that’s proof that her office’s review of forms that are submitted to her office works.
