ALBUQUERQUE, NM — Police officers, prosecutors, teachers and educators say the threats of school shootings are serious, and they think it’s time New Mexico’s laws reflect that.

“The Albuquerque Police Department investigated 28 of these incidents in September. 28 times school was cut off,” Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina said Tuesday.

New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez has proposed increasing the charge of threatening to shoot up the school. It is currently a misdemeanor. The proposal, if passed by lawmakers, would make it a crime.

“There is simply no excuse for threatening a school and threatening gun violence,” said AG Torrez.

Torrez said the state’s current Juvenile Code allows CYFD’s Juvenile Justice Unit to handle up to three misdemeanor cases, including threats of a school shooting, without the involvement of a prosecutor.

This is not the case with crimes.

“I think that creates a real problem in terms of identifying patterns of behavior with certain children who are in desperate need of intervention,” Torrez said.

State Rep. Joy Garratt said she will sponsor the bill during the upcoming regular session of the New Mexico Legislature.

“We’re going to change one word, misdemeanor, to three words, felony of the fourth degree. And that will have an incredible impact,” Garratt said. “Our children and our educators deserve to be children. (They deserve) to walk the halls of their schools and play on the playground without worrying about guns and violence.”

Republicans have tried to pass a similar measure for at least the last three sessions.

Educators called the following proposal an important piece of the larger public safety puzzle.

“When your kids don’t feel safe, they can’t learn. It kills the soul of a community,” said Amy Suman, superintendent of the Pojoaque Valley School District.

How about a buy-in from students?

I asked him, “How do you get kids to figure out what’s a felony versus what’s a felony? Am I really going to be punished for this? Will I go to jail? Whatever it is? How do you make them stop?”

“We have to match our response with a level of seriousness that, frankly, we don’t have right now,” Torrez said.

It’s something these leaders believe they should.