Walter White's Hometown Is Under Siege

Real life is currently imitating AMC 2008-13 art

It’s been 20 years since annual armed-robbery statistics were as high in Albuquerque, N.M. as they were in 2016. In both cases, methamphetamine drugs were a main culprit.

Per the first of a two-part series in The Albuquerque Journal by Mike Gallagher, the mid-1990s meth was manufactured in so-called U.S. “super labs.” In the case of 2016 and 2017, which is on track to match or exceed last year’s total for armed robberies, it’s coming from south of the border:

The armed robbery explosion has been fueled by a combination of factors: massive influx of methamphetamine and heroin from Mexico, not enough cops, weak laws and new criminal justice system rules that placed a high priority on cutting the jail population and reducing the number of cases on judges’ dockets.

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