New Questa police chief talks about rebuilding the department

Ronald Montez Jr. has officially been the police chief of the Village of Questa for a month now. Montez has been diligently working on building the department from the ground up after former chief, Nicolas Lamendola, and all three of his officers quit the department in 2020.

With guidance from Mayor John Ortega, who was elected in the March municipal election, the village is beginning to rebuild the department with Montez, a 14-year veteran of New Mexico State Police, at the helm.

The Taos News spoke with Montez this month to get a sense of that process and the hurdles that still need to be overcome.

How are you going about forming a police department essentially from scratch?

Right now, it’s definitely in the building stages. I wish it was just as easy as getting started and being able to roll the streets, but unfortunately, there’s a lot of administrative things that have to happen before we even begin a police force really; like equipment that we just don’t have — things like body cameras and equipment that is required by law that wasn’t back then. Basically, we’re finding equipment, vehicles, that sort of thing. That way, when we do get applicants and we are able to get people hired, they’re able to just jump in a seat, and we can get the necessary training done to get started right away.

What does your effort look like right now? You must be talking with the village council and asking for money for various things that you need for the department.

Yes. A lot of this equipment and the equipment that we did have has either been dated or is not functioning properly. It’s a lot of upfront costs, because things like vehicles can run upwards of $70,000, fully updated. A simple Taser runs about $1,500. A lot [my job now] is going to the council and to procurement to try to get these items.

How far along are you in that process?

I guess we can say we’re a little more than halfway there. There’s other things that we’re going to have to get through to the [New Mexico] Municipal League through grants or from the Department of Public Safety.

What are some of the biggest needs in terms of equipment?

Number one is body cameras. A police department can’t function without those right now, by law. Another main thing that we need are vehicles. I am in a vehicle that the Village of Questa had for the department. However, it doesn’t have any of the emergency equipment like sirens, radios, any of that stuff. Another thing that we’re going to need is handheld radios.

What’s the current state of the station?

We have computers that are somewhat up to date. We’ve got the things that we need to to get started for sure. It’s not like we’re having to buy all new equipment and everything. Everything’s pretty updated, other than the building.

When do you hope to start advertising for positions?

We’ve already started advertising and we’ve already opened up a couple of positions. Once we get things figured out, we’ll start hiring people and get the ball rolling with that.

Have you had any applicants?

I wouldn’t say we’ve had any applicants, but we’ve definitely had people that have expressed interest in the vacant positions.

What is the pay rate?

It’s depending on the experience. I don’t want to throw out a number, but I will tell you that it’s very competitive with anywhere locally. I would say it exceeds that of other departments of similar size.

How many officers would you like to have?

In a perfect world, my goal is to have me along with five officers. If we can get five solid individuals, I think that would serve the community well.

What is the timeline?

I don’t want to give anybody false hope or give anybody false promises. It’s just a matter of how we can get people to apply and how quick we can get this equipment. Once that starts, then we’ll hit the ground running.

What are some of the top public safety issues in the community?

Serving the public is why we’re in this position, that’s why I took the job. Serving the community is about finding out the trends in crime, and Questa tends to follow the same trends as everywhere else with property crimes and drugs. We’re seeing a downtick in violent crimes but a huge uptick in property crimes and shoplifting. I don’t want to be a reactive agency to where we’re just responding to calls. I want to be proactive: being active within our community, going to community events, hosting community events and hearing issues from the community and seeing what their needs are.

How do you hope to deal with substance abuse?

Number one, we need to be understanding that it’s a disease and that we have to treat it as such. Yes, we need to hold people accountable for their actions. Yes, we need to do our job when it comes to drugs and crime — but we need to have some compassion for those people that are struggling with these addictions.

What are some of your biggest hurdles?

My biggest hurdle has been the evidence fault. We want to make sure that when we do investigate crimes, that we’re basically following the law and common practice when it comes to maintaining chain of custody and evidence and that sort of thing. Unfortunately, some of the destruction orders and the evidence vault hadn’t been done for some time.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

I ask for patience, but just rest assured that once things get underway, that we’re gonna have a professional organization that’s going to serve its citizens to the best of its ability.