This story was originally published by New Mexico In Depth. It’s republished here with permission.
By Bella Davis
New Mexico created a new alert earlier this year to help find Native people who go missing. But since the Turquoise Alert went into effect in July, New Mexico State Police have only issued six, despite 27 requests from local law enforcement agencies, including those serving large Native populations.
The denials are due to the way state police interpret the definition of “missing person” in state statute, a spokesperson says. At least one local law enforcement official hopes the Legislature will revise the statute so when Native people go missing, more of them will meet the state police interpretation for when an alert may be issued. Two state lawmakers who sponsored the legislation say they’re open to that because the alert isn’t working how they intended it to.
The small number of alerts has confused and frustrated some members of his community, said Farmington Police Deputy Chief Kyle Dowdy.
“I think people were sold an idea about what was going to happen in their mind, and that idea did not come to fruition,” he said.
In recent years, Native families and advocates have successfully pushed state lawmakers to respond to the long-ignored crisis of Native people disproportionately disappearing and being murdered. The goal of the alert was, in part, to reduce confusion among law enforcement agencies — particularly in border towns and on reservations — about who has jurisdiction, which can slow down investigations. Several other states, including Arizona, have created similar alerts.
It’s unclear how many Native people have been reported missing in the state since July, partly because a New Mexico Department of Justice portal and an FBI list are updated monthly, with names removed as people are located. The portal on Tuesday listed 197 Native people missing from the state and the Navajo Nation.
Under the new alert system, local law enforcement can, after receiving a report of a missing Native person, request state police issue an alert, although the statute doesn’t include any mandates for local agencies.
Eight police departments and sheriffs’ offices have made 27 requests, according to state police. But the agency has rejected most of those, including 13 of 18 requests from police in Gallup and Farmington, towns that border the Navajo Nation, from where dozens of people are currently missing.
According to the statute, a person is considered missing if, first, their family member, close friend or custodian — a person who has legal, physical control or care of a child or adult with a developmental disability, or a person who helps an adult with daily living — doesn’t know where they are. And the circumstances must indicate that the “person did not leave the care and control of the custodian or immediate family member voluntarily and the taking of the person was not authorized by law,” or that the custodian didn’t consent to the person leaving.
Under that definition, a Turquoise Alert can’t be issued based on a report from a non-custodial family member that their loved one is missing, according to Lt. Philip Vargas, a state police spokesperson.
So, for instance, if a man reported that he and his family hadn’t heard from his adult, legally independent sister, and they were concerned because it wasn’t like her to not be in touch, she wouldn’t be eligible for a Turquoise Alert, Vargas said.
From his perspective, that could help protect people who are trying to escape abusive relationships or otherwise unsafe living situations. Plus, he said, if multiple alerts were going out every day, the public might start to tune them out.
Even if a case doesn’t meet the criteria for an alert, state police can still get the word out, Vargas said. Local law enforcement agencies can ask them to post on state police social media accounts or publish a press release. Vargas said he wasn’t aware of any local agencies making such a request for a case that didn’t qualify for a Turquoise Alert.
The Indian Affairs Department developed the legislation creating the alert. Asked whether this is how department officials intended it to function, spokesperson Paris Wise wrote in an email the department “defers to” the Department of Public Safety — which houses state police — “who we worked closely with on the legislation and who is the agency that oversees the alert systems in New Mexico.”
Two lawmakers who sponsored the legislation, Sen. Angel Charley, D-Acoma, and Rep. Michelle Paulene Abeyta, D-To’hajiilee, in a joint statement to New Mexico In Depth, wrote they didn’t envision the alert functioning in the way state police are carrying it out.
“The Turquoise Alert was always intended to support families — including non-custodial family members and community members who report a credible concern — in the first critical hours after a loved one goes missing, because early reporting can literally save lives,” they wrote. “The alert was designed to remove barriers, not create new ones.”
They’re open to taking another look at the language in the statute, Charley (Laguna Pueblo/Zuni Pueblo/Diné) and Abeyta (Diné) wrote. In the meantime, they’re working with DPS “toward solutions that will strengthen implementation.” And they’re requesting funding for a full-time state employee who could coordinate all missing persons alerts, track data related to the alerts, and offer guidance to families with missing relatives about making reports.
Gallup Police Department has requested 11 alerts. Two were sent out. State police determined a third case met the criteria, but the person was found before an alert was issued.
Farmington Police Department has requested seven. As with Gallup, two were sent out. State police have told the department they’re denying their requests because they don’t meet the criteria in the statute, said Dowdy, the deputy chief, but the department has continued to ask.
The hope is that they’ll be issued anyway, and that the Legislature will change the statute, he said.
“We’re continuously submitting these and showing we value these people, they’re very important to us, we want to help their families find them, and if we could get a little legislative help to fix some of the nuances in the law, we could better, I think, serve our community by issuing some of these that right now [state police] aren’t able to issue or choose not to issue,” said Dowdy, a member of a state task force on missing and murdered Indigenous people.
He noted he’s not speaking on behalf of the group.
In the five Farmington cases that state police denied, the people who were reported missing were eventually located, according to Dowdy.
Of the two alerts sent out for people in the Farmington area, for a 12-year-old girl and a 24-year-old woman, they both returned to their respective homes within two days of the alerts being issued, Dowdy said.
The other four people state police issued alerts for, in Gallup, Los Lunas and Ruidoso, were located.