Albuquerque sees shootings decrease in 2023, even as gun violence tears families apart

Feb. 18—Devin Caballero was a typical 18-year-old — his time divided between days on the basketball court, smoking weed and playing video games late into the night.

When Caballero went out, he rarely said where he was headed. And one evening last May, he didn't come home.

Officers responding to a double shooting found Caballero dead inside his vehicle. Another young man was hospitalized.

Months later, Nicole Caballero said her son's absence haunts the home. She no longer hears him rummaging through the kitchen for a midnight snack. His 4-year-old autistic brother often says, "Devin in the sky, he's smiling." Her son's once-sweet mastiff mix Dexter has grown aggressive.

"They (watch) me sit there and cry for my son. It's just affecting my whole family," Nicole Caballero told the Journal, breaking down into tears.

Even as gunfire continued to destroy families, the number of people slain and injured by violent acts in Albuquerque fell significantly last year after hitting record-high levels in 2022.

The city recorded a 19% drop in homicides last year, from 121 in 2022 to 98 in 2023. It marked Albuquerque's largest annual decrease since 2010, when homicide totals hovered in the 30s.

The city also saw a 6% drop in nonfatal shootings, according to Albuquerque police data, from 353 in 2022 to 332 in 2023. Last year's total still remained well above the 265 and 285 shootings recorded in 2021 and 2020, respectively.

The trend downward mirrored those seen nationally, even in the most violent cities. Across the country, the decrease has been attributed to an easing of the societal impacts of the pandemic.

Locally, authorities say it is a result of better staffing and making more arrests in violent crime.

Those who make a living studying crime in Albuquerque say the data being collected isn't good enough to say for sure either way. But the numbers should continue to fall, they say.

Some 2023 homicides captured headlines and spurred political action, such as the shooting death of an 11-year-old boy that pushed an unsuccessful attempt by the governor to ban publicly carrying guns in Bernalillo County.

The majority of homicides, like Caballero's, didn't capture the public's attention. Many happened after the sun went down and, often, were cleaned up by the time it rose.

Nicole Caballero said the detective on her son's case left the homicide unit six months ago. She said the family has yet to hear from another investigator.

"They keep saying, 'He's top of the list. We're working on it.' But I don't know how true that is," Caballero said. "It's very, very frustrating. It makes me mad. It makes me sad. I'm just going through so much."

In June, Crime Stoppers announced a $2,500 reward in the case. It remains unsolved.

Solving cases, preventing more

Detectives solved 53 of the 84 homicide cases from 2023 for a 63% clearance rate. Some involved multiple victims, and several suspects have since died or are on the loose.

The Albuquerque Police Department also solved 31 homicide cases from previous years, including a case that had long gone cold, a 2014 killing of a local homeless advocate.

Police Chief Harold Medina attributed an improving solve rate to boosting the homicide unit to 16 detectives and training them better. He also said he believed the sheer number of homicide suspects arrested — 117 in 2023 alone — has driven down new cases.

"We've had groups that we think were involved in several over the years, and once we get them, we take them out of the picture," he said. "If not, they would have continued and continued."

Medina said getting the thousands of stolen and pandemic-purchased guns off the streets is another hurdle. He said the surplus means more people are armed when a "simple conflict" arises.

The simple conflict, categorized by APD as "individual disrespect," accounted for 57% of 2023's killings.

At the center of those disputes: a movie theater seat, a middle school squabble and a borrowed bike.

The cost: a father of four sticking up for his wife, a sleeping 5-year-old girl and a man known as "a true friend to everyone."

Here, there, everywhere

The decrease in homicides was felt across Bernalillo County.

The Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office investigated 17 homicides last year, compared with 21 in 2022.

"A lot of homicides are an argument over a $25 laptop or small amount of money that you've misplaced for drugs. ... So it's over pretty dumb stuff, honestly," BCSO Sheriff John Allen told the Journal.

He said being more proactive and singling out the drivers of crime, such as auto theft, will hopefully keep the numbers going down. Allen said the community also needs to address the root causes of crime, using education and outreach to divert young people from "that path."

One BCSO case involved two 16-year-olds boys playing with guns outside a high school. One teen was "messing with" the gun when it went off, killing the other boy.

Allen said there needs to be a better balance between punishment and rehabilitation for youths. He said easy access to guns over social media and the cultural notion that guns are "cool" need to be addressed.

"One life to me is huge. Everybody wants the masses, I see why, because they're in panic mode and want a quick-fix solution," he said. "It's a long-term solution ... and we have to be multifaceted."

The decrease in homicides close to home was felt across the nation, in big cities including Los Angeles and Detroit, but also in those long besieged by gun violence, like Chicago.

Baltimore, with a similar population and — some could argue — reputation as Albuquerque, for years has been known as one of the most violent American cities.

Last year, Baltimore recorded a 22.5% drop in homicides, its largest single-year decrease, and a 7% drop in nonfatal shootings, according to the city's data.

"While this is indeed good news, the Baltimore Police Department still believes there is much more work to be done," Richard Worley, Baltimore police commissioner, said in a statement.

In the statement, Worley attributed the progress to "a holistic and comprehensive" approach that includes initiatives to address violence on a community level while lessening officers' contact with those in crisis.

Worley continued, "We are encouraged, but we must proceed with our data-driven approach while continuing to build relationships with the community."

A lack of good data

Paul Guerin, director of the University of New Mexico's Center for Applied Research and Analysis, said crime data shared by authorities is often inconsistent.

"There's all these nuances that occur across these 18,000 or so agencies in how they report crime," he said.

Guerin reviewed APD-provided data on 2023 homicides.

Those statistics detailed motive ("individual disrespect," drug-related and domestic violence took the top three categories), victims' ages (most were between 36 and 45), suspects' ages (most were between 18 and 25), weapons used (80% involved a gun) and victim and suspect race/ethnicity (the majority involved Hispanics, but Black people were disproportionately represented).

Guerin said the data lacked case-by-case specifics to "paint a better picture of murders in Albuquerque," information that could be used to bring the death toll down but also solve more cases.

Nationally and locally, he said, the previous increase in homicides and violence is often blamed on what he called "the degrading of the social contract."

"There's this general idea of this change in behavior that the pandemic kind of accelerated," he said — more reckless driving, suicides, drug use and overdoses.

Guerin said, homicides "could just be another example."

He said, whatever the cause, the upside is that the trend reverted last year in many cities, including Albuquerque.

"Things always just revert to the norm," he said. "The problem is, our norm is always higher than everyone else's."

FBI data shows that when homicides and violent crime decreased in the United States in the 1990s, Albuquerque and New Mexico never caught up. The homicide rate, save for in three distinct years, never fell as low as the national rate over three decades.

Even in comparison to violent locales like Baltimore and Chicago, which were high but steady, the homicide rate in New Mexico — driven largely by its biggest city — vacillated greatly from year to year.

"There's something unique about Albuquerque. What is it about our location? ... Why do we always have more murders?" Guerin pondered. He questioned if the nexus of Interstate 25 and Interstate 40 invited crime, or if violence is somehow ingrained in the state's culture.

In his 32 years conducting studies at UNM for government agencies and policymakers, Guerin said nobody has studied those particulars.

"Right now, all we can do is we can say, 'Here's our (homicide) count, here's what they look like, they kind of follow trends.' But to get down to the nuances of this, like, 'why?' we've never done it," he said. "It's not like math, where something equals something. We're taking our best understanding of these things with the information that was available."

Perception vs. reality

As local agencies like APD and BCSO tout decreased crime, those on social media platforms accuse them of fixing the numbers. Alternatively, detractors say it's because much more crime goes unreported because of a lack of faith in law enforcement.

Guerin said crime, in general, has always been underreported but there's no indication the data available doesn't give an accurate picture.

A 2023 Gallup survey found that 77% of those polled think crime was higher than the previous year. The national poll found 63% believed "the crime situation in the U.S. is extremely or very serious."

"That's not true, but they perceive it to be true," Guerin said of the poll results. "It's always been a problem, and the problem goes both directions. People telescope either way ... exaggerate either way."

He said he thinks the perception and reality is disjointed due to where people get their news. Websites like Nextdoor, Guerin said, can build up a false perception.

"If you look at Nextdoor, you go, 'Oh, my goodness, we live in a crazy world,'" he said.

Guerin said there are two sources people go to: official law enforcement data and "victimization data." The latter is anecdotal and echoed across social media by unreliable sources.

Guerin said this perception paired with high-profile crimes can lead to fast policy decisions by lawmakers.

"They're driven by the need to respond quickly (in) politics. But a lot of decision-making may not be as well-informed by data," he said. "I want policy to be driven by data. That's what I want. And more than just informed, I want it to be driven."

State Rep. Dayan Hochman-Vigil, D-Albuquerque, sponsored House Bill 144 in the session that just ended to address the lack of usable data in New Mexico.

"It will help us, as lawmakers, collect data on the laws that we pass — to see if they work," she said of the legislation, which would establish the Office of Gun Violence Prevention and Intervention.

The office would serve as "a resource bank" of information from law enforcement, hospitals and other sources. The data would then be used to identify information gaps and promote research to find best practices in preventing further bloodshed.

Hochman-Vigil said the current ways data is collected is "siloed" and the bill would standardize datasets statewide to serve as a resource for law enforcement, advocates and government agencies.

She said the bill's failure this go-around, despite being one of the governor's priorities, was due to unforeseen costs to the Department of Health. Hochman-Vigil thinks they will have better luck next year.

"I'm now armed and prepared to do the work I need to do over the interim to bring it back in the next 60-day (session) to get it passed, hopefully, pretty easily," she said.

Sheriff Allen looks over the data and he hears the community's concern firsthand. He also believes there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

"We see the news all the time of crime, crime, crime. I get it. But we're going in a positive direction," he said. "There will always be crime, but our city will grow and it'll flourish and it'll be back to what it used to be like when I grew up and went to West Mesa High School. That's my end goal for when I leave office, or at least provide a footprint or something to get to that goal."