Why did you move to New Mexico? (Albuquerque, Santa Fe: crime, townhouse)

[Cathy4017]

Yes. The same thing can happen in Alamogordo. I was coming out of Lowe's, and putting my groceries in the back of my car. While not nearly as dramatic as what happened to you at Sonic, a police cruiser was there, and the officers were in the process of handcuffing a shirtless, multi-tattooed, scruffy guy who looked to be about 25-30.

It actually surprises me that there are so many people here from the East Coast and the Midwest, because it IS very different out here in the Southwest. NM is a poor state, and probably always will be.

But I have always loved NM.....I've been all over the state, and have been coming here since I was a small child. Alamogordo IS in a beautiful place, and I still like it, despite the downsides.

The hard lesson I have learned is...if you see palm trees growing, the winters are too mild and the summers too hot.

[domino]

Two things to consider:

These things probably happen in NJ as wells, but the affluent neighborhoods are more isolated and insulated from the undesirable elements. Smaller towns just don't have the ability to segregate the affluent from the less so.

Time has passed. As a child growing up in Las Cruces, I never witnessed what you described, but that was 40+ years ago. Since that time I have witnessed it in middle class and affluent areas of Houston, New Orleans, Atlanta, Dallas. I think we live in a different world than we grew up in - larger gap in economic well being, more people living on the margins, more extremely affluent.

I feel your pain, if only we could all live our lives locked in a gated community.

[songinthewind7]

I've witnessed scenes like this mostly in the larger cities I've lived in. In the smaller towns, it doesn't seem to happen alot but when it does, it's heartbreaking because smaller towns are 'supposed to be safer' from what I've heard or at least that's what I like to think.
I think it also has to do with the times we live in now. When most of us were growing up 2,3 or even 4 decades ago, our parents taught us right from wrong and taught us how to be decent human beings. Nowadays, most parents don't want to teach that and the kids grow up to be pond scum that cause problems for innocent people.
Mike, I'm glad you can answer your kids when they ask questions about the bad things that happen in life and maybe you can end it with something positive by telling them that the bad guys don't get away with treating others with disrespect.

[songinthewind7]

It's very easy to get into a gated community. It really doesn't do any good to live in one for safety reasons.

Originally Posted by domino

Two things to consider:

These things probably happen in NJ as wells, but the affluent neighborhoods are more isolated and insulated from the undesirable elements. Smaller towns just don't have the ability to segregate the affluent from the less so.

Time has passed. As a child growing up in Las Cruces, I never witnessed what you described, but that was 40+ years ago. Since that time I have witnessed it in middle class and affluent areas of Houston, New Orleans, Atlanta, Dallas. I think we live in a different world than we grew up in - larger gap in economic well being, more people living on the margins, more extremely affluent.

I feel your pain, if only we could all live our lives locked in a gated community.

[ajzjmsmom]

Originally Posted by mike0421

This is a tough post to write, because I've been thinking about something that happened five days ago, and it's sticking with me. And because what I am going to articulate is bound to offend some here. That's not my intent, but rather to be as honest as I can. The reason my wife and I chose to move to New Mexico is one that is common to many: namely, to put our family in the best possible position financially. We have two small children, ages 6 and 5. When we moved here, they were 2 and 1. On June 8th, 3 days from now, I will have been a New Mexico property owner for 4 years. I moved here ahead of my family in January 2005, so I have been here a little longer than that. We moved here after I accepted a position at Holloman AFB. (I no longer work at Holloman, however) I come from New Jersey. One of our regular posters here, Tigerlily24, is also from New Jersey. She might be able to relate to what I am about to articulate here, and perhaps some others will as well.

When I first arrived here, in advance of being offered a position at Holloman, we drove up to Alamogordo from the El Paso airport. It was December of 2004. I've said in other posts and will say it again: I am a summer person. Love the warm weather as opposed to my New Jersey home, where the weather is, to me, horrible. The initial feeling of arriving at El Paso in December with the temp 65 degrees and no humidity was euphoric. We were excited to see Alamogordo, had never seen any pictures. (Back in 04, no Google Street View either!) Upon approaching Alamogordo, my wife and I recoiled. Coming from suburban NJ, we both lived lives that up until that point, I hadn't realized how relatively fortunate we were. In suburban New Jersey, outside of New York City especially, there are neighborhoods of affluence that abut each other. Towns where median 6 figure household income is the norm. Driving into Alamogordo, after 80 miles of nothing, was quite an eye opener. There were dilapidated trailers lining Rt 54, scattered, no real sense of order. Pressing on towards the center of Alamo, we encountered White Sands Blvd, and the commerical district. This too, was unlike anything we were used to in New Jersey. My wife actually started to cry. When you work at Holloman AFB, Alamogordo is the anchor town for the base. My wife immediately dismissed Alamogordo, which was really unfortunate, because from a practical standpoint, living in another town was going to involve a lot more of a commute. We drove on through High Rolls and Cloudcroft, and identified more with these areas. Cloudcroft especially felt like a cousin to many rural towns in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania, something we'd had prior experience with. However, after meeting with a realtor, we discovered that the prospect of living in Cloudcroft was impractical, because the cost per square foot of household there was appreciably more than we were willing to spend. Our intent upon moving was to lower our mortgage, our living costs. Cloudcroft wasn't going to fit the bill from that standpoint. There was also continuing education to consider. I had already started pursuit of my Master's degree. So, the following day, we drove through WSMR and onto Las Cruces, where another realtor was awaiting our arrival. The same feeling, driving down through Tortilla Flats and Butterfield on Rt 70 as the one we felt driving through Rt 54 in Boles Acres was one we experienced: another conglomeration of poverty on the outskirts of a New Mexico city. However, unlike Alamogordo, the realtor was able to take us to some very desirable neighborhoods in LC. Without exception, all these neighborhoods had homeowners associations. I knew when we toured the areas around Roadrunner Drive that we were going to be ok, because these neighborhoods somewhat resembled what we were used to in NJ. I enthusiastically accepted the position at Holloman, and we were ready to turn the page, new chapter to our lives, etc.

In the four years we have lived here, my wife has made some lifelong friends. People here are very approachable at first encounter, which is something we did not experience in NJ. (I will say however, that in NJ, once you break down that initial wall of suspicion, you are going to meet some extrodinarily fine individuals.) The one overwhelming negative, that I have been occasionally been able to shake, since I've lived here, remains the poverty. Many times, I've been to the point where I think I've finally been able to shake it. There have been times, however, when I've gotten quite upset, primarily last winter when my wife and I had our cars broken into, in our own driveway, and when our neighborhood was vandalized with graffiti. I thought to myself then, that living in what is considered to be a middle to upper-middle class neighborhood, if this were in New Jersey (or for that matter, most of New England, the northeast) this would never, ever happen. I've similarly stated that in NJ, I could leave my doors unlocked during the day while at work, and I'd have no fear of burglary. That is not possible here, and I've learned that the hard way.

In my first sentence in this post, I alluded to something that happened to me this past Monday, and I will share it with you now. I took the day off from work because I had to babysit my kids. I had to go into downtown LC on El Paseo Drive because one of my kids had a dentist appointment. Afterwards, I took them to Sonic for lunch. As I mentioned previously, my kids are now 6 and 5. The six year old is particularly approaching the age of reason, and now, fluid conversations are the norm. I was waiting at Sonic for the carhop to deliver us our meal. As I was doing so, I noticed a teenager, perhaps early 20 something, stalking back and forth between the drive in aisles on either side of the Sonic parking lot. Having spent nearly every day of my life working in urban New Jersey, in some horrible neighborhoods, has really spun me up on when knowing something very bad is about to happen, in advance of it happening. I was saying to myself, out loud: "Something's up. There's something wrong here." My son, listening to my every word, suddenly says, "Daddy, what's wrong?" No sooner was he saying this, than right there in front of my eyes (AND MY KIDS EYES) , emerge two Las Cruces police cars on either side of Sonic, proceed to rush this kid, detain and handcuff him, instanteously. There is instant commotion, the kid is dragged off to the side of the restaurant, a waitress is attempting to approach the area where the scuffle is occurring, and the police are frantically telling her to go back to the area where she was at previously. My kids are both watching all this happen, as the kid is being shoved into the police cruiser. The inevitable questions from my kids follow: what happened? Why was he bad? Then my daughter asked me a question that just floored me: "Daddy, did you see this happen when you were a boy?" That question was my 'breaking the fourth wall' moment, an epiphany of sorts. My answer to her was the truth: "No". In fact, growing up in New Jersey, I had never seen anything the likes of what I saw until I was about 19 or 20, when I began working in downtown East Orange. I had been in New York City previously, and had seen some illicit activity, but nothing approaching a restraint, arrest, and multiple police convening on a suspect in the middle of a fast food restaurant. As I answered her sincere question, the rest of the day was occupied with thoughts of my childhood, and the state I grew up in. Either I really, and truthfully led a very charmed and privileged childhood, or, perhaps the spatial dynamic in New Mexico is such that such exposure to these incidents is unavoidable. For instance, it is very VERY unlikely we would have seen anything approaching this had we decided to move to Cloudcroft. But then again, there are no Sonic restaurants in Cloudcroft either. There are in Alamogordo, but could the incident my kids witnessed in LC happened also in Alamogordo? You bet it could. However, I grew up in a town that had plenty of restaurants, plenty of stores of every conceivable variety, where as a 9, 10, 11 year old kid, I remember vividly being able to walk to and never, ever see what happened this past Monday. What I think I am trying to formulate here is that what I've observed in New Mexico is that there is a substantial risk of encountering illicit, criminal activity any time you decide to foray into the center of a substantial population center, and by that I mean anything over about 5,000 people. That number is intangible, but it is the one I come up with offhand. In addition to transparent poverty, there are drifters almost everywhere, once you leave residential communities. And with that, especially as the father of two small (but rapidly growing) children, there is that undercurrent of unsettling feeling. As I've said, there is definitely a spatial component to this. Once you leave population centers in NM (with the exception of ABQ) there are no really built up neighborhoods that reflect any degree of affluence. There is, instead, nothingness, for the most part. Perhaps in this sense, New Jersey is more a national exception to the rule. As I've said, you can literally drive 40, 50 miles away from New York City, or 20, 30 miles outside of Philadelphia, and drive through one prosperous town after the next. And I think I took that for granted when I lived there. I assumed that's the way a good deal of the U.S. was laid out. But it really isn't. I think the best comparison, at least with Las Cruces, is to look at each zip code as a separate town. I've thought of many different ways to look at the situation at hand. But since this past Monday, I've really thought of what happened, what my kids saw, and contrasted that with what I was brought up with. And I have been wondering to myself ever since: is this really a place where I want to raise my children? Is this place conducive to an American run of the mill middle aged family of four? I have my doubts, and that is sad, because this place is beautiful indeed. The natural beauty here unparalleled, certainly more than most places east of the Mississippi River. The weather, the climate, that too is sublime. But this can become wallpaper after a while. The real brick and mortar in one's life is people and community. You have to feel comfortable in that skin. Perhaps this sentiment won't linger, and try to look past it. I am hopeful it will.

In regards to the initial trip into Alamo from El Paso I so identify. I had been coming to Las Cruces all my life because we had family there but had never remembered coming thru Alamogordo. I like your wife started crying as did my 15 yr old daughter and I remember asking my husband if it was to late to go back home to Texas when we drove up HWY 54.

That poverty is so prevelant here is crazy, we are planning to move to the NOVA/DC area with hubby's job in the fall so I have been visiting the NOVA forum and the area we are going to settle in gets alot of flak in regards to the schools in that area. I dm'd one of the members who lives there and asked what the problems were and she told me it was the poverty and the effects that come with it ie single family homes, lack of discipline. She mentioned that one middle school now has to have a policeman on campus all the time while the others only get a weekly visit. For us living in Alamogordo this is nothing new, both middle schools and the high school have a designated police officer for the school, full-time.

On this note I do want to add though, I think what we are seeing is just a general degradation of society and I don't know that it would be any different if you were to move back to NJ. I know for me I would love for my kids to be able to be raised in a town like I was raised it where everyone was friendly, you were safe, wasn't necessary to lock your doors and you generally trusted everyone. I look at Alamogordo and other than petty crimes it is generally pretty quiet however in the last year we have had 3 murders, and on Tuesday night one of the airman was shot at the Alamo apartments, he is in critical condition in El Paso. Also about 3 wks ago just 2 blocks from our house someone commited a drive by shooting, fortunately noone but a vehicle was hurt.

My biggest issue with NM is the lack of good education. While you have some elementary schools here that are good all of the schools have that element of poverty since you find a really nice neighborhood but then the next block over it is not so nice.

I know our time in NM is fast coming to an end and in some ways I am very glad and ready to move on, it will be hard leaving my 2 adult children and I would hope at some point in time they would follow us to the east coast, but for my husband's career he has gone as far as he can here and in order to better our retirement we will make this move. I have made some friends and will miss them when we leave but I just look at it as another adventure in this game of life. I do have to admit though that nowhere that I have ever been does the sunsets rival those in NM. I do miss the lush green and look forward to experiencing that, I will take the humidity that goes with it. I am tired of rock yards, sand and the winds, I will leave them behind without any remorse.

[AlisonL]

I've seen these things happen every where, including Maine. No place is safe from anything as long as more than one person lives there.

[mortimer]

I moved here six times.

Once, I made the move soon after graduating from school in Ohio.
I wanted to be in the Rocky Mountain area. I actually "aimed" for
Colorado (Denver, Co. Springs, Pueblo), but found a job here in
Albuquerque. That was 1985.

I went to UNM in the early 1990's leaving for Co-op (Internship jobs).

I spent a semester in Houston, twice ( 2 moves ).
I spent a semester in Dalton, GA ( one more ).
I spent a semester in Huntsville, AL. Huntsville, BTW is near the tail end
of the Appalacian chain of mountains ( yes, I consider them mountains ).
( that's one more move )

Final move out of ABQ - I moved to the Bay Area for my wife's job
( two years ). We moved to the Phoenix area from 2000-2007.

We moved back here and I'm never leaving.

In Houston, I missed the dry air and chile. I missed the mountain hiking.
In Dalton, ditto. I missed mountain hiking without Poison Ivy.
In Huntsville, ditto + crappy breakfast town. (Good walking town.)

In the Bay Area I liked the weather, but missed being able to leave town.
( I missed being able to see the outside of town. ) Missed chile also and
resented their interpretation of Huevos Rancheros - Puh-leeeeeeze!

In Chandler, I missed good weather for 11.9 months out of the year.
I hated the 100+ temperatures that lasted about six months.
Phoenix area Huevos Rancheros - Puh-leeeeeeze!

[domino]

The South (another poor area of the country) is also plagued by poorer areas on the outskirts of towns. They are less visible because of the piney woods that hide them. Instead of dust and dirt, they have mildew and green slime growing on the trailers.

[ajzjmsmom]

Fact of the matter is there is poverty no matter where you go, but like Domino said you don't always see it. For anyone it is just a matter of preference and what is important to them. I haven't always disliked NM and I also know we may get to NOVA and realize we stepped in a big pile of doo doo but we won't know unless we try. Maybe some of my displeasure is the feeling that my husband has been screwed out of a position that was rightfully his by the good ole' boy system and the feeling that we have to leave in order to further his career. I know what is wonderful to one isn't always wonderful to another.

[lalahartma]

Boyfriend is being relocated by his job to ABQ, and I may be moving here also.