The city has the second highest rate of police shootings of any U.S. city in the last decade, according to the Mapping Police Violence database.
Around a third of incidents involve someone in a mental health crisis, according to city data.
To offer people in crisis support rather than law enforcement, the city has set up one of the country's most ambitious civilian responder programs.
MARTIN: "We can show up and calmly enter and, you know, calmly engage with someone. They may still be yelling and they may still be tossing things at the wall. Which is okay. It's not directed at me. So we can remain there and just be a calm presence until eventually they want to engage and de-escalate."
They have no enforcement powers nor protective equipment.
They say they use their voices and brains to deescalate encounters with people in mental health and substance abuse crises.
They may have even saved some lives.
SANCHEZ: "It's just like your approach and how you talk to people makes a big difference. If you go in there, like as an authoritative figure, I feel like people are less responsive to you. And like they kind of get, you know, in defense mode."
Such initiatives have spread across dozens of U.S. cities since the 2020 murder of George Floyd brought the growing awareness of police killings to a fever pitch.
Albuquerque's officer involved shootings hit a record in 2022, with 11 people killed - nearly as many as the 13 in New York City, which has 15 times the population.
The two-and-a-half year old Albuquerque Community Safety department, or ACS, now takes the majority of the city's mental and behavioral health calls when a weapon or threat is not mentioned.
It takes about 5% of all 911 calls.
The department also offers services ranging from school violence intervention programs to outreach for unsheltered people or those who have experienced traumas like shootings.
Jeffrey Barnard, interim commander of Albuquerque police investigations, would like to see ACS get more funding.
"I think it's gotten to a point where it could do some rapid expansion, and I think that would be very good, like being involved in all the schools. So, I would like to see their budget increased for that."
Word is spreading of ACS's ability to get people with mental illness to hospital who would not go with officers or paramedics.
But how big ACS can grow is limited by its budget of around $17 million.
That's large compared with programs elsewhere but dwarfed by the city police's $ 268-million funding.
ACS has 65 responders compared with around 900 Albuquerque police officers.
