Albuquerque police are investigating two more homicides. Both happened early Tuesday morning.The first happened around 4 a.m. near Gold Avenue Seventh Street in downtown Albuquerque. According to APD, a person was found dead inside of a car. Then around 6 a.m., cops were called to a possible shooting at Motel 6 on Avenida Cesar Chavez and found a person dead.These latest homicides bring APD's total number of homicides to 78, surpassing the 2020 total of 77 and inching closer to the department's record of 80 set back in 2019."We knew we were going to break the record," said Chief Harold Medina. "It’s something not only the city of Albuquerque is facing, it’s a national trend."Mayor Tim Keller also admitted the city will see a record number of homicides this year."We know El Paso's homicide rate is up 150%. Fresno is up 300%. Oakland is up 200%. Portland is over 1000%," Keller said. "We do expect these trends to continue and I do expect Albuquerque to break 100 this fall."Chief Medina told KOAT that many of the homicides that happened this year have some things in common."Back in January, we talked about hotels. We talked about the increase of homicides at hotels. The past few weeks we’ve talked about hotels, midnight to 5 in the morning and narcotics activities, and what’s going on behind us has all three of those elements," Chief Medina said. "The bottom line is, yes there is a lot of crime, without a doubt ... there's a lot of things going on during this midst of this pandemic that is leading to this rash in homicides."Chief Medina admitted his department is understaffed. "We’re stretched thin with resources in a lot of ways and I'm not shy in saying that. I may make a decision to give homicide additional resources, but that may mean that some of the requirements of our court settlement agreement, where they want me to give more people to the academy or internal affairs, may have to be on hold as we try and get resources to fight crime in the city," Chief Medina said.He added, it will take time to get a handle on homicides, just like the city faced when it came to auto thefts."Our auto theft numbers greatly improved. That was our biggest issue in 2017 and 2016. That was the number one issue when I came and now the number one issue has changed to homicides and we are working on it. It took us a couple of years to get us the auto theft numbers moving in the direction we wanted and it is going to take us some time to get homicide numbers moving in the direction," Chief Medina said.In 2017, APD's homicide unit had 5 detectives. Now it has 14 plus two sergeants and a deputy commander.