I moved here in July last year, it has a lot going for it, but also a lot of problems.
The SFPD has been understaffed for a good while, citing the difficulting finding qualified candidates in general and having to compete with the larger juristictions that pay better in particular (e.g. Albuquerque, Bernilillo Co). SF is a small city of approximately 68K pop (about 147K in the county).
Part of the problem is that "The City Different" is very liberal and pretty affluent, with a good-sized gap between the 'haves' and the 'have nots'. There isn't much of a middle class here, you're either well-off or struggling. There are a lot of affluent utopian moombats who have enacted a 'living wage' (IIRC it's $8.50/hr), but you really can't live on that in SF - the median price of a home here is $346,125, rents are similarly high, sales tax is 7.625%. The liberal/lefties here have all kinds of utopian/egalitarin schemes, none of which really work very well, but it has spawned an undercalss with a sense of entitlement.
Then there's the available talent - the SF high schools only graduate about 85%, and academic standards are very low (the public schools here suck). Throw in the hispanic equivalent of the eastern urban hip-hop culture, and a lot of the 'talent' has a criminal record by the time they graduate. There are a lot of genuinely stupid, clueless, and irresponsible people running around NM.
NM is also a very corrupt state. Having lived in Chicago, NYC, and Boston, I know democratic machine politics, and NM can hang in there with any of the biggies. Evem after 25+ years in the DC area I was impresssed with the political shenanigans here.
Bottomline, though, I don't think much will come of it. It was just some political hack trying to demonstrate their 'out of the box' progressive thinking(?) while the moonbats are screaming for someone to do something!. It's the state capitol, and talk is cheap becasue the supply far exceeds the demand, and the minions easily mistake motion for action.
