Following an uptick in complaints about downtown vagrancy and in the midst of a police officer shortage, city officials spent close to $1 million to find a short-term solution—a solution that has put more men in uniform around the Santa Fe Plaza thanks to a contract between the City of Santa Fe and Condor Security of America.
Nearly two months since hiring Condor, some of those same local vendors wonder whether paying $750,000 for 16 Condor security officers was money well-spent.
Anson Stevens-Bollen
City officials spent $750,000 for security guards in the downtown area following an uptick in complaints about downtown vagrancy.
Tourism Director Randy Randall tells SFR the move was made because downtown retailers had been “very vocal and very concerned” about the recent behavior of vagrants in the area, including reports of people sleeping in downtown streets and creating a nuisance. Those concerns arose just as the city of Santa Fe announced a series of one-time expenditures for city priorities identified by staff, councilors and residents.
I know when I go to another community and I see security visible, it makes me feel good.
“My thinking is that for folks who want to misbehave in this whole area, they will be less comfortable doing it, and they won’t get away with it as easily,” Randall says, noting he believes he’s seen improvement since the program’s launch. “It’s also to provide not just a reactive, but a proactive presence of security. I know when I go to another community and I see security visible, it makes me feel good.”
However, a third of the way into the six-month program, business owners say they’ve yet to see that improvement.
Lost Padre Records store owner George Casey moved his business downtown three years ago. There, he tells SFR, he’s endured people urinating in his doorway, sleeping at his storefront and leaving him a mess to clean up in the morning.
“There’s bits and there’s garbage and stuff like that. It’s not like I’m seeing assaults,” Casey says. “I’m seeing stuff that’s close and could go that way but hasn’t necessarily yet.”
He notes a particular couple continues to frequent the area near his business and “gets very aggressive” with tourists—pushing, chasing and shouting at them. About a month ago, he had problems with the couple firsthand. After declining to give them money, one of the two screamed insults at Casey and smacked the window of his car as he was getting in to leave the store for the day.
“I think they have a routine, so though they’re around, it’s not constant, and it’s not like they’re only on our one block going back and forth,” Casey says. “I can tell you that in the time the security guards have been here, I have seen no decrease in the activity that we see around here.”
Anson Stevens-Bollen
Lost Padre Records store owner George Casey says he’s seen no decrease in misbehavior since the security officer pilot program began.
That leads Casey to question why the city ever hired the downtown security guards.
“It’s a temporary contract for a rather large amount of money. I don’t know how much a police officer makes in Santa Fe, but why wouldn’t you just hire two cops for a couple years? That’s the part that I’m lost with,” Casey says. “That just seems really strange to me. If they’re so proud of it, if this is such a great thing, why don’t they hold a press conference and say ‘We’re solving the problem’? We’ve hired private security, but they don’t do that, and that makes me suspicious also that they’re not so sure that this is a great idea either.”
Cafe Des Artistes owner Jean-Jacques Desalle concurs. He moved his business from Canyon Road to downtown five years ago. He tells SFR he has yet to see any of the new security guards around his business near Lincoln Avenue and Marcy Street, where individuals speed down streets and leave trash such as leftover broken bottles from drinking on the sidewalks.
“It annoys everybody, and it’s very dangerous. If there was a kid who just came out on the road or a dog or an old person that’s not paying attention, I mean, that person will get killed,” Desalle says. “There has never been anybody over here, and it keeps on going. It has not changed a thing.”
Furthermore, he adds he believes police officers are better suited to address the issues he sees.
In my opinion, we don’t actually need security guards. We need somebody that can actually do something about people speeding. To put security guards here, it’s money thrown out the window
“In my opinion, we don’t actually need security guards. We need somebody that can actually do something about people speeding. To put security guards here, it’s money thrown out the window,” he says. “The security guard cannot do a damn thing about it all. All it would take is one police officer at the end of the street, and that would take care of the problem, because if they speed, you just pull them over.”
Randall disagrees. He says while the security guards cannot make an arrest or charge an individual with a crime, they do have the power to detain someone for up to two hours. However, he notes “private security is not police.”
“Public safety and private security are two different things. The issues that are happening off Cerrillos Road, for example, really require more than just a private security presence—they require police because it’s not just a matter of annoying behavior,” Randall says. “The hope is that by having this amount of security downtown, it will take a little bit of the load off of the police in this area—not preclude them from helping—and then allow the police to focus on what are more hotspots.”
Anson Stevens-Bollen
City of Santa Fe Tourism Director Randy Randall says “the real purpose” of new downtown security guards is to “move along” those loitering or sleeping in public.
As for the security guards, the “real purpose” is “to move people along and reduce or stop any bad behavior” observed, the tourism director adds.
“This is a stop-gap to prevent Santa Fe from getting an image and a reputation that would be very detrimental to one of our most important economic drivers,” Randall says.
Desalle disagrees. He doesn’t believe people loitering or sleeping downtown are a major issue at all.
“They hang around, and they can be a nuisance, but these people have never caused any trouble for me,” he says. “The people causing trouble are the guys driving their cars crazily, drinking alcohol and breaking glass on the sidewalk, and they are not homeless.”
In July, Mayor Alan Webber weighed in on a US Supreme Court 6-3 ruling that allows cities to criminalize sleeping or camping in public areas, telling SFR he disagreed with the outcome. In the June 28 decision from the City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, justices reversed the rulings of two lower courts and ruled restricting people’s ability to sleep or camp in public did not violate protections against “cruel and unusual punishment” guaranteed within the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution.
While the city of Santa Fe prohibits encampments on public property, the mayor said the distinction is in how it’s handled. Rather than a jail penalty, city employees such as park rangers “try to relocate people to a safe sleeping area,” he said.
Webber’s administration also issued an emergency proclamation deprioritizing the clearing of encampments during the COVID-19 pandemic, but that ended in June 2022 when the ordinance was reinstated.
Webber told SFR the ordinance was not intended “to make life miserable for homeless people,” but rather “to protect people who have legitimate business and property rights” and “get people to realize that camping outside isn’t the safest option.”
On Aug. 14, the city council and the mayor voted 8-1 to spend the money on the downtown security officers. District 4 Councilor Jamie Cassutt was the sole vote against the spending, saying the pilot program should be moved to the Cerrillos Road corridor, where public safety concerns have mounted in recent years.
A memo on the budget adjustment resolution that created the pilot program indicates city staff will measure the effectiveness of private security and the “critical times” to have them in place. Furthermore, “if proven to be effective, the private security program will continue with a mixture of Lodger’s Tax, Gross Receipts Tax and private investment support from the businesses benefiting from the security,” it reads.
When asked who specifically among city staff was tasked with evaluating the program or developing its criteria, Randall’s answer was vague.
“City staff will be leadership to an extent using information gathered from police, retail operators, hotels and others who operate in the historic district,” he says. “As we move along, we are determining how to evaluate effectiveness which includes review of the daily reports I receive to see if incidents are reduced and generally there are fewer bad behavior incidents in the area. We do not have specific criteria at this time.”
A daily activity report from Condor Security provided to SFR shows regular foot patrol of areas surrounding the Plaza that range from the early hours of the morning into the late evening accompanied by brief notes of what security officers saw and how they handled the situation. The information provided, however, does not include data before or after the implementation of the pilot program, nor could Randall provide it when asked.
Anson Stevens-Bollen
Randall says he believes new security officers “expand the eyes and ears of our police” amid staffing shortages.
“There’s no way to fully document the improvement we’re seeing, but the general feedback I’ve gotten from our retail community, who are the ones closest, is that they are finding this helpful and that they’re seeing less problems,” he says.
Data provided by the Santa Fe Police Department from Sept. 1 to Oct. 14 shows 36 calls for service in the area surrounding the Plaza without close patrols. This compares to the three previous years of data, where the number of calls in the same period of time ranged between 57 and 62.
Furthermore, he adds, while the program has the budget for 16 positions, the city and Condor Security “haven’t gotten there yet.” Currently, only 12 are filled, he says.
“Basically the $750,000 should cover us if we were fully staffed for six months, but because we’re not fully staffed, we’ll probably end up running a little longer,” Randall says.
Whether councilors would support continuing the program remains to be seen. District 1 Councilor Alma Castro, who represents the downtown area and voted in favor of the program, tells SFR she’s “proud” of her constituents for their efforts. However, she adds, she wouldn’t vote yes again if city officials cannot show the effectiveness of the program after the six-month mark.
“[Randall] has the burden of proof at this point, and if he doesn’t have that information, it’s going to be really difficult for us to continue to fund the program,” Castro says, noting she has had concerns with the quality of private security guards hired in the past. “So there’s a lot of difficult conversations to be had, and it’s important that the process be followed. Part of our job, and the city manager’s job, is to make sure that if we don’t meet that criteria that was set, like having some sort of evaluation, that we don’t spend the money again.”
Randall says he believes the program “expands the eyes and ears of our police,” and with police shortages, the security guards are a necessity. SFPD currently has a total of 169 sworn officers when fully staffed. In late August, Police Chief Paul Joye said department data showed a 13.6% vacancy rate.
“When we think about the priority of a misbehaving vagrant downtown compared to a robbery in the Cerrillos Road area—that downtown action just doesn’t get the attention,” Randall says. “And yet, for the sake of our residents and visitors who come and enjoy the downtown area, we need to address it, and so these security guards are an attempt to just see if we can stop it from growing and start reducing any misbehavior.”
SECURITY GUARD ABILITIES
Tourism Director Randy Randall tells SFR the security guards are expected to stay on city property for patrols and will not enter buildings unless they are called to respond to a nuisance occurring within a store. He adds all business owners downtown received a dispatch number for the security company if needed.
“Their whole idea is to be a deterrent from the outside, and a disturbance is not something like shoplifting,” Randall says. “That’s what the police do.”
He adds that security officers can detain an individual who was identified as a shoplifter for up to two hours after the person exits the business, for example.
In general, however, he says, “they are trained to deal with nuisance behavior, and that’s what we want them to do … it’s not to get people arrested for sleeping on the sidewalk, it’s to make sure people don’t sleep on the sidewalk.”
WHAT THEY CAN DO
-Detain an individual for up to two hours, move along those who loiter/sleep in public
WHAT THEY CAN’T DO
-Charge an individual, make an arrest
TRAINING LEVELS
Training instructors for Condor Security of America note over 60 years of both military and law enforcement experience. All downtown security officers are at least Level 2 rank. Those training categories include:
LEVEL 1 - Public relations, verbal judo, search and seizures, arrest procedures, pat downs, handcuffing, basic report writing and crisis intervention training
LEVEL 2 - Take-down techniques, officer survival, advanced handcuffing, vehicle searches, advanced report writing; and leadership and supervision
ADDITIONAL ADVANCED TRAINING
HIPAA/OSHA, CPR/First-Aid, Special Response Teams, firearms, fire watch, taser, active shooter, baton, OC/pepper spray and sexual harassment
