Santa Fe Police Chief Raymond Rael announced Monday that his department is offering free trigger locks to City of Santa Fe residents to ensure public safety.

The trigger locks will be handed out free of charge on a first-come, first-serve basis while supplies last at the main Santa Fe Police Station at 2515 Camino Entrada off Cerrillos Road.

They will be available at the front desk Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

“Residents with firearms in their homes must take common sense steps to avoid accidental shootings,” said Chief Raymond Rael. “The Police Department encourages storing weapons locked and unloaded with ammunition secured in a separate place.”

Santa Fe’s Public Safety Committee unanimously passed a resolution earlier this month recommending that all city gun stores sell trigger locks with every firearm. Current law states only new guns are required to be sold with them.

The Federal Aviation Administration says it will close 149 air traffic towers due to budget cuts,  including those at Santa Fe and Double Eagle II in Albuquerque.

Under orders to trim hundreds of millions of dollars from its budget, the Federal Aviation Administration released a final list Friday of 149 air traffic control facilities that it will close at small airports around the country starting early next month.
    
The closures will not force the shutdown of any of those airports, but pilots will be left to coordinate takeoffs and landings among themselves over a shared radio frequency with no help from ground controllers under procedures that all pilots are trained to carry out.

In a statement released Friday, the U.S. Contract Tower Association said the decision “raises serious safety, efficiency, and economic concerns that the agency has failed to consider.”

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) - A judge has ordered some Santa Fe neighbors to stop threatening each other over barking dogs, loud music and access to a subdivision road.

The Santa Fe New Mexican reports that State District Judge Frank Mathew told the feuding neighbors Thursday in the Mission Viejo subdivision not to harass or call one another after a series of bizarre complaints.

Keith Bujold has been in a long fight with neighbor Ernest Kavanaugh Sr. over access to a disputed road that has resulted in threats with pistols.

Bujold says the Kavanaughs began harassing him and his wife four years ago by telling them, "You're all Gringos from New York.

Go back to the city and leave us alone."

But Kavanaugh says Bujold called him a "Mexican" who didn't speak English well.