Teens caught stealing bait car, taking it for joyride in Albuquerque

By Sasha Lenninger

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    ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (KOAT) — The Albuquerque Police Department is seeing an increase in juveniles committing crimes.

“They are involved in criminal activity and the number one criminal activity they all go back to is auto theft,” said Chief Harold Medina during a press conference last week.

The department shared a video with KOAT of six juveniles stealing a bait car and going for a joyride across the city.

On Wednesday, Dec. 27 around 9 p.m., Albuquerque officers are alerted of someone inside a bait car in northeast Albuquerque.

“We try to look at problematic areas or areas. We’ve had high auto theft and we try to place bait vehicles in those areas,” said Commander Jeff Barnard.

Cameras inside the bait car capture at least two teenagers trying to start the vehicle.

“It looked like they tried to take it. But for some reason they were unsuccessful at first,” said Barnard. “We saw them take off in a white vehicle. Couldn’t tell too much about it at that time.”

The teens leave, but 30 minutes later, APD is alerted about someone unlawfully entering another bait car, roughly two miles away from the first one.

“It was the same exact subjects that we had seen, at least two of them,” Barnard said.

Cameras capture the teens figuring out how to start the car.

“I need the flathead because … you can’t do it with a charger,” one teen is heard saying.

Eventually, the group of teenagers starts the car and takes it for a ride across the city, with the same white car following it.

“They saw that white vehicle was following them around, obviously involved in the theft as well,” Barnard said. “We were able to determine that white vehicle was also stolen. It was reported stolen about 30 minutes prior to the first vehicle going off.”

The APD auto theft unit is following the stolen cars on the ground, while the department’s helicopter is following their every move from above.

“They just cut off a driver. Went through and continue southbound Coors,” the tactical flight officer said, as he guided auto theft detectives.

The teens are caught driving reckless throughout the city, doing donuts in parking lots, speeding on streets, running red lights and even bumping into each other.

At one point, the helicopter captured the group in an apartment complex parking lot, standing on the stolen cars, taking photos with a gun.

“Our Air Support Unit was able to see… at least one of them with a firearm,” said Barnard.

Cameras inside the bait car confirmed at least one gun and new plans to steal another car.

“Ride three deep? Or you think, nah that’s too much huh,” one teen said.

While at another apartment complex, the teens break their way into another car.

“Looks like the broke out the window on the passenger’s side. Looks like they took it out and laid it behind the car,” said the tactical flight officer.

Officers then decide to spike strip the cars.

“[We] were able to spike the vehicles, safely disabling them. Then we had a brief foot chase where the group split up a bit,” said Barnard.

All six teens were apprehended and ranged in age from 14 to 17.

APD told KOAT that juvenile crime and their involvement in auto thefts is something they’re seeing a lot more.

“These thefts don’t seem to be for any particular reason except joyriding,” said Barnard. “When you have a group like this making rash decisions, they don’t have maturity and a disregard for safety. You could see serious injuries happen.”

Luckily no one was injured. Officers found two guns that night.

In all, the group of six teens stole four cars in just two hours.

” I think that if you look at some of the things that we’ve seen, like on the adult side with feeling like there’s not necessarily consequences for people’s actions,” said Barnard. “I think that we see that sometimes starting to transition to the juvenile side, and you have even less maturity.”

APD is now working to crack down on juvenile crime.

“Anytime we have a juvenile with a firearm now, we’re able to book that juvenile for sure,” Barnard told KOAT. “We’re also working on trying to book the juveniles when they’re having auto thefts because we tend to see it relate to other crimes.”

The department is also tracking firearms and making sure teens involved in crime enroll in one of their programs.

“We look at our Violence Intervention Program. So we’ve recently started making sure that we’re trying to get our auto theft offenders into the VIP program, so they can get services,” said Barnard. “We’re also looking into the family situation, making sure that we can provide that with VIP as well.”

APD told KOAT that if any parent is not being responsible with their firearms, they will likely get charged as well.

“We’re spending a lot of resources trying to track these things down and make sure we can identify them and charge them for that,” said Barnard.

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