Phill Casaus: There's no silver bullet in crime, but this may be silver lining
Sep. 17—The New Mexican last week covered yet another striking example of how crime is morphing in the city, state, nation.
You probably saw the stories: Santa Fe police arrested a man in connection with an alleged theft Monday at Home Depot in which a suspect, Jesus Gonzalez, is accused of brandishing a firearm and leading cops on a high-speed chase in town before the folks in blue backed off.
Later, they caught up to Gonzalez and Chrystyne Sanchez in downtown, but only after a police cruiser was rammed and an area rife with tourists and shoppers got an alert with the three words that may replace e pluribus unum as the nation's motto: Shelter in place.
Gonzalez faces a variety of charges related to the Home Depot incident and vehicle pursuits that could get him between three to 17 years in prison. Sanchez, accused in the second vehicle pursuit, faces four felony charges. Police said they are looking for a third potential suspect.
These kind of steal-and-go operations — once falling under the umbrella of mere shoplifting, but now increasingly tied to more ominous violence and, occasionally, a gun — are becoming more common. Today, thieves are as likely to fence what they steal, particularly in large quantities, as they are to use the products themselves.
Though you might not consider such incidents organized crime, Rob Black, president and CEO of the New Mexico Chamber of Commerce, cautions that crime is becoming, at minimum, more organized.
What happened in Santa Fe, he said, is viral — often, tied to what's happening in other cities, and not just New Mexico.
"The region gets bigger than just, you know, Santa Fe to Socorro," Black said a few days after the Home Depot incident. "It's [also] Tucson and Phoenix and L.A."
That's one of the reasons the chamber and entities ranging from the state Attorney General's Office to the Albuquerque Police Department recently announced their use of an online tool called Auror.co, an online database employed by retailers and law enforcement to track crime activity and gather real-time data on potential suspects.
With that comes a public-private partnership called the New Mexico Retail Crime Association. Yeah, there's a little bit of a double-entendre in the name, but the bottom line is above board: The organization uses the Auror.co platform — hoping it will allow cops and retailers to share information in a more seamless and timely way.
This doesn't mean retailers are taking the law into their own hands. But maybe they're linking it to their fingers.
"I don't think there's a silver bullet, but I think part of what we've tried to do with the launch of the New Mexico Organized Retail Crime Association is one, create a platform that allows for a public-private partnership between business, retail and law enforcement," Black said. "Where we can, in real time, share security footage, photographs of license plates of suspects, descriptions, et cetera, into a platform that law enforcement can then easily build cases with."
The concept of collaboration, paired with technology, he added, allows the many law enforcement agencies in the area to avoid operating in silos.
"So, all of a sudden, they can start to see that this person's hitting multiple stores over a month's time and build a case for that individual, which is incredibly powerful ... it's time saving for law enforcement," Black said. "Because if you think about going to a judge and saying, 'Yeah ... this person stole a DeWalt drill in Santa Fe,' the judge might not see that as a big deal. But if he stole 15 over the last five days, plus a few flat-screen TVs, then you start to say, 'Oh, this is not just a one-off thing. This is a pattern.' "
In an email, Santa Fe Police Department Deputy Chief Ben Valdez wrote such online platforms are an interesting possibility.
"If a platform is launched with our local businesses," he wrote, "we would be very interested in learning about the capabilities and how we can partner with them."
The financial hit of theft, according to the chamber, is massive. One study estimates the impact of organized retail crime at $819 million in product theft and $56.6 million in retail theft. Less obviously calculable, but absolutely real, is the danger to store customers, employees and the general public. In Monday's Home Depot incident, the potential for things to go south — south as in deadly — was massive.
Add in the loss of trust, of security, and it's no wonder such incidents have ominous sounding names like organized retail crime, and spawning ominous-looking acronyms like ORCA and NMORCA.
According to the state chamber of commerce, New Mexico becomes the 20th state to have an Organized Retail Crime Association. Black said big-box retailers in those states already are uploading their security footage into the Auror.co program.
"So now we'll be part of that broader network and can start to put together this pattern of behavior with these folks that might even be across state jurisdictions," he said.
There is no silver bullet. But maybe there can be a silver lining.
Phill Casaus is editor of The New Mexican.
