Are Police or Bad Guys Winning?

Juan,
I would like you to call our crime prevention specialist Steve Sink at 924-3600. He should be able to provide you will lots of great information on crime prevention and statistics. Thanks for your question.

Good Morning Rochelle. Sorry to hear about your burglary. If you can send me a case number or your full name and address where it occurred I can get a response back to you within the week. Hopefully we will be able to identify an offender on your burglary.Some times the prints belong to the victim or they are not workable. Lets hope they belong to a known offender and we can apprehend him.

Sally,

Thank you for your compliments and we are working very hard. The Chief is currently attending a funeral, so I will address your question. We do recommend that you keep registration and insurance in your vehicle. Please remember never to leave your title in the vehicle. Other items not to leave in the vehicle are any items which include your personal information such as date of birth or social security number.

Andrew,

At the moment the Chief is at a funeral service will be available shortly. We have two APD property crime experts here right now, would you like for them to respond?

Good morning Andrew. That is a great question. I am also the supervisor of the Crime Stoppers Unit and we were actually thinking of putting a picture of a recently stolen vehicle on our Crime Stoppers billboards. Sergeant Heckroth of my Auto Theft Unit has also started gathering the information on a daily bases and getting the information out to his unit and other specialized units so we can take a proactive approach to the auto theft problem. I also am working on a meeting with the news director of channel 13 and I will talk with the Journal personnel today.

Eileen,
Good morning and thank you for this question. The only way they should be able to get a copy of the key for your vehicle is if they provide the dealership with some type of ownership information, such as title, registration and identification. So as long as the thief does not have this information he should not be able to get a copy of your key.

Good morning Justin. That is a great question. That question can not be answered with a blanket answer. I can tell you that you do have a right to protect your family and your property. If you feel that your life or your family's life is in danger you can us any force necessary to protect you and your family up to and including deadly force. Also if the offender is no longer a threat to you or your family or you do not feel they are a threat to the general public you may not use deadly force. I hope that answers your question.

Good morning Keith. I just spoke with Journal personnel and they advised it may be something that they may be able to do. They may be able to do it on line but probably not in the newspaper on a daily basis. As a department, we usually have civilian employees who compile our statistics for us and I know they do get some information out to area block captains. I hope we can do something with your idea because without the communities help we will not be as effective.

Good morning Don. I would not say people in the far North East have more expensive vehicles and a lower theft rate just because they live in the NE. There are many reasons why the theft rate is lower in the far NE. First most homes in the far NE have garages and they usually use their garages. They also are near the end of the city limits and their population is not as dense as the inner city population. As far as VIN etching we will be holding a free VIN etching at the Wal-Mart on Carlisle and Menaul this Saturday (June 23) from 10:00 to 2:00 and the wait is usually no longer than half an hour. I hope I answered your question and see you on Saturday.

Arley,

I'm sorry to hear about your truck. While the statute of limitations has run out reference your stolen truck, I would like to get the offender information so that I could background him to verify how many arrests he has or if he is still an active thief. Please send me his information to lheckroth@cabq.gov.

Good morning Arley, sorry to hear about your stolen truck. The Chief could not be here today due to a State police officer's funeral being held today. As far as your auto theft it is past the statute of limitations for prosecution. please send me all the information you have on your case. I would still like to look into your case so I can advise you about what we know about your offender and to see if we can still target him if he is an active criminal.

Hi Joe, As you can well imagine safety is always a concern. In a crowded interior this particular tool may not be the best mode of transportation, but it might be used in case of an emergency or if conditions (such as pedestrian traffic) would allow. Take care and thank you for your question.

Good morning. You are right -- home alarms are not usually listed as priority one call. There is one main reason -- a really high percentage of burglary alarms are false. I worked as a street cop for almost eleven years and during that time I probably responded to thousands of burglar alarms and during that whole time I only had two incidents that were actually true alarm calls. If we are notified by the alarm co that they can hear someone inside or a neighbor advises us there are offenders at the home they will be reclassified as a priority one and officers will be dispatched as soon as possible.

Good morning Mike, sorry we didn't do a better job for you. It does sound like we have leads on your case that can be followed up on. If you give me a call at 768-2338 I will see what I can do to get your case looked into. As far as cell phone information we usually don't have much luck with them due to new restrictions put in place by the Supreme Court. we usually do have luck with the credit card information though. I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

We have been trying to get a law passed. We were in Santa Fe this last session lobbying for an auto theft authority. We envision that to be part of the motor vehicles.
I do meet with people on a regular basis all they have to do is call and make an appointment. I try to respond to all my emails within 12 hours. Because most alarms are homeowner error we prioritize based on the information that comes in concerning the type of alarm and the circumstances we determine the type of response they will get.

We work in concert with animal services on a theft of an animal. It is a larceny, and based on the solvability factors, we do work those and ocassionaly recover animals that have been stolen. Most recently we recovered a parrot stolen from a business.

When it comes to court cases the way we have established that is what a reasonable person would do. If the offender is running away he may not be a threat anymore. But if he's running away armed with a weapon he could still be a threat to the victim or citizens in general. I hope that answers your question.

Scott,

Thank you for your question and good morning. I would like to inform you that prior to these stories hitting the media, the Chief of Police did make property crimes a priority. Prior to getting promoted I worked specifically in a proactive tracking unit within the department. I was recently put in charge of the Auto Theft Unit with one goal in mind -- to pro-actively address auto theft. We are working hard and are trying to address these problems. It is a work in progress. Believe me nobody wants our unit to be a success more then I do. My family members have also been victims of auto theft and I remember how much this type of crime hurt them.

We are always acting in a pro-active response in all new emerging crime trends. For example, our bait vehicles have been out in the field for the past two years to curb the auto theft problem before it was recognized by the media. We are also aggressively working identity theft rings and other organized theft rings to include organized shoplifters. Unfortunately, a lot of our pro-active enforcement is not adequately covered by the media.

No we do not. But we do request that people do through and complete inventories of their property to include serial numbers and phtographs. There are software packages that we suggest people purchase to help keep track of their property. We do have crime prevention officers who work at all of the area commands who will go out to business and homes and analyze the building to come up with suggestions on how to make things safer.

Hi Rochelle, First thank you for your great question. Many factors come into play, namely if the "Latents" or as some call them fingerprints, such as if the lifted latents are workable. When a latent print is lifted it will be reviewed if there is enough of ridges and "points" can be identified for a match. Once that is accomplished the Latent-point information is entered into a system called AFIS to search for a match. The nice thing about this system is the latent-point information is stored in the system until the day a match is made. Only if there is a current file of an known, or suspects prints on file can there be a match. If a workable latent is found, it is entered right away, then AFIS system goes to work, and if a match is made the information is forwarded to the Investigative Unit handling the case. A case is then worked up and an Arrest Warrant is requested (Arrest to follow), and then the case is taken by the DA's Office. As you can see it may be a long process, but in the end is an extremely effective method of putting together a solid case that many times never goes to trial, but the offender will plead guilty to the crime. Take care, and once again thank you for your question.

Rochelle, as a department we have made great improvements on processing finger prints at our crime lab. If I have the information I can usually call the lab and have them run the prints right away and I will get a response within days of my request. It will take a few days to get the paperwork back to us and we usually will seek a warrant for the offenders arrest. If we don't get the case sent to us the crime lab will process the prints and send the information to us on a monthly bases.

Andrew, APD has a priority list for dispatching of calls based on the level of threat to the community and the caller. a priority one call will be dispatched as soon as officers are available and requires two officers. They are based on a high level of threat to citizens and officers. Priority two calls are based on a moderate threat level and may require one or two officers and they can be upgraded at any time if things change. Last of all is the priority three call. There is a very low threat level. these too can be upgraded at any time.

The crime rate increase last year in Albuquerque was at four percent. Crime in most major cities rose in excess of 11 percent. The additional resources have been successful in combating crime rates. Had it not been for the increase in auto theft alone, our total crime numbers would have actually declined in 2006.

Etching is when detectives used an acid an etch the VIN number onto the windows of your vehicle. A lot of vehicles are stolen for their parts and one of the most popular parts next to airbags is the auto glass. So by having your VIN numbers etched on the glass it is harder for auto thieves to sell those windows.

Don, I will answer this question for the Lt. Being able to determine if someone was on a cell phone at the time of an accident is extremely difficult and will very often require a warrant to obtain cell phone records to see if someone was on a cell phone. When the new ordinance was enacted, we purpously did not begin enforcement for the first 30 days in order for the public to be educated about the ordinance. The ordinance was discussed at length with the media, on radio talk shows and throughout the news. The next 30 days only consisted of warnings and even today cell phone enforcement is a secondary enforcement violation and not a primary. We will continue to work with traffic safety advocates to better educate the public about cell phone usage.