MDC employees demand Bernalillo County remove warden Kai Smith

More than 100 Metropolitan Detention Center employees packed the Bernalillo County Commission chambers and lined up one by one to demand that county leaders remove Warden Kai Smith. Many wore union gear, and the union said it brought more than 1,000 signatures from MDC employees, staff relatives and county residents backing new leadership at the jail.

The show of force put the county’s jail crisis squarely in front of elected officials in the Ken Sanchez Commission Chamber, with Smith watching quietly from about 20 feet away. The message from the floor was not just about one administrator. It was a public warning that confidence inside New Mexico’s largest jail has eroded enough to draw a large, organized workforce revolt.

That revolt comes after months of strain over staffing, assaults and command decisions at the Metropolitan Detention Center. In late May, 14 members of MDC’s Corrections Emergency Response Team resigned, including at least one team leader, leaving 22 officers on the unit. Those departures came after repeated assaults on officers and a no-confidence vote on Smith, while union leaders also cited delayed specialized training and a disputed response to a mid-April weapons-search issue.

Bernalillo County Manager Julie Morgas Baca announced Smith’s hiring on April 26, 2024, saying he brought more than 24 years in corrections experience to the job. But county officials now face a direct challenge to that appointment, and Morgas Baca has said she has no plans to remove him. That leaves commissioners with a familiar and politically difficult question: how much longer can the county keep a warden in place when a large share of the jail workforce says it no longer trusts command decisions that affect safety inside the facility?

The pressure is magnified by the county’s own oversight structure. Bernalillo County created the Detention Facility Management Oversight Board to review whether MDC operates in line with federal and state law and to help ensure the jail remains safe and secure. County and court documents also reference an operational population limit of 1,950 inmates, even though the jail’s design capacity is about 2,236 beds.

The building itself has needed attention as well. In February 2025, Bernalillo County asked for $2.3 million for MDC security and operational upgrades, including a new cell-door food pass system and new boilers. For county leaders, the staffing revolt is now tied to a broader test of control over the jail’s day-to-day operations, its physical conditions and the public’s confidence that Bernalillo County can keep both detainees and officers safe.