Albuquerque's Hispano Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday unveiled a new website that shows different types of crimes throughout New Mexico's legislative districts, and officials believe it can boost anti-crime efforts at the Roundhouse.
The website, crimestatsnm.org, allows users to see up-to-date statistics on violent crime, property crime and theft and drug-related crime. It also displays a ranking for each legislative district in New Mexico in five categories, with each category ranked on a scale from 'great' to 'critical.'
"It's a big deal," Albuquerque's Hispano Chamber of Commerce CEO Ernie C'deBaca told Albuquerque Business First about the state's crime situation. "It's the number one item on peoples' minds in New Mexico. It's even on the minds of people not in New Mexico that might want to come here."
The Hispano Chamber supports several bills being introduced in the state legislature that are "intended to reduce crime in the state," according to a news release. The hope is the data-driven dashboard will inform both lawmakers and their constituents about the level of crime that occurs.
C'deBaca said that a group of people on the Hispano Chamber's board have volunteered over the past eight months to meet weekly with statewide experts to better understand the crime situation in New Mexico.
Steve Chavez, an Albuquerque businessman and a recent appointee to New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham's advisory council tasked with studying how to reduce crime that affects businesses across the state, spearheaded the Hispano Chamber's anti-crime committee.
"We want the legislature to understand that the business community is really rallied together as one voice to come in and work together to help," Chavez said during Wednesday's announcement at the Hispano Chamber. "We don't want to point fingers. We want to make a change."
Work on the website started about one month ago, C'deBaca told Business First.
"Its purpose is twofold," he said about the website. "It's to educate not only lawmakers but the general public, their constituents, too. And it's to help advocate."
To use the website, users have to create an account with an email and password. Users can filter crime statistics information by New Mexico House district, New Mexico Senate district or zip code and access resources on the website to advocate for anti-crime legislation.
It also comes with a tool to send pre-written emails to legislators in selected districts on behalf of the Hispano Chamber.
The site uses crime data compiled by a national crime statistics database that pulls data from local police reports and the FBI. It uses artificial intelligence to fill any reporting gaps, according to the website.
Real Time Solutions, a software company based in Albuquerque's Old Town, built the website under a contract with the Hispano Chamber. Real Time Solutions CEO Chris Schroeder told Albuquerque Business First that the company built the website in about three weeks.
"We see it as a mostly educational website," said Schroeder, whose company employs about 45 people. "We're passionate about New Mexico and we want to help tell the story that the data is showing."
Neither C'deBaca nor Schroeder disclosed how much the contract between Real Time Solutions and the Hispano Chamber to build the website was worth.
During Wednesday's announcement, Schroeder said Real Time Solutions is working on adding a tool to track legislation to the website. It could be done by next week, he said.
The website was "significantly less complicated" to build than other projects that Real Time Solutions has worked on, Schroeder said. Those projects include VaccineNM.org, a centralized public health module to streamline Covid-19 vaccine rollout, and BeWellnm.com, an online health insurance exchange.
BeWellNM tapped the Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce to oversee its outreach and education efforts in January 2021, and Real Time Solutions is one of the Hispano Chamber's members.
