Law enforcement initiative draws mixed reaction from east Central business owners

Mike Spaeth has a routine.

Each day, he unlocks the chain-link gate to his business on Central and Indiana, rolls it open and picks up spent hypodermic needles from the gravel below. Then, he walks the perimeter, where he often finds people slumped over, asleep or out-of-it, against his businesses’ front door or under its windows.

He opens the shop, though the door is always locked until he sees a shopper approach. Inside Southwestern Minerals are rotating shelves of fine gems, geodes and crystal prisms that sit untouched under glass, waiting for customers that he says are few and far between these days.

More than six months ago, 2nd Judicial District Attorney Sam Bregman announced an initiative to clean up East Central, in part to help beleaguered business owners like Spaeth. The reaction has been mixed.

The plan, called Operation Route 66, was to unite law enforcement, the DA’s office and state Corrections Department to fight crime in the International District, a part of town that has grown locally infamous and become a national spectacle with videos filmed in the area garnering millions of views on YouTube.

“In the coming months, a very clear message will be sent: If you smoke fentanyl, you will go to jail,” Bregman declared at a news conference announcing the initiative in February. “If you don’t show up for court, you will be picked up on your warrant and brought back to jail. If you commit a crime, you will be held accountable.”

In that February news conference, Bregman — who is also running for New Mexico governor — asked the media to hold him to his promises.

“In 45 days, I want you all to come back to this Albuquerque neighborhood and see if it’s cleaned up,” Bregman said. Then in May, Bregman said the operation would go into the foreseeable future — with no timetable given.

On Saturday, DA spokesperson Nancy Laflin called the operation “a huge undertaking.”

“There’s still more work to be done. It’s a big ship to turn — but they’re making progress,” she said. “They’ve done an amazing job.”

Walking along Central east of Louisiana on Tuesday, dozens of people shuffled by with bikes and overstuffed backpacks. Bright orange needle caps stuck out on the gray pavement. Outside a shuttered Vietnamese restaurant, a man dipped his finger into a small plastic-wrapped parcel with people crowded over his shoulder. Down the block, another man lay collapsed and unresponsive near the Albuquerque Rapid Transit bus stop.

Some business owners and employees have said the operation’s been a success so far but would like to see more police presence, while others said they’ve noticed little improvement in cleanliness and safety. Others say extra policing is just displacing people — with no follow-through to keep them from returning to the streets.

Mike Spaeth and his wife and business partner, Melisa, said the operation hasn’t helped them at all.

“They’re just scattering the herd,” Mike Spaeth said.

According to him, law enforcement show up, disperse encampments, sometimes make arrests — but each day he sees the same faces. Multiple times a week when asking people to leave, he’ll catch a whiff of fentanyl and feel spaced out for hours, he said.

It wasn’t always like this, Melisa Spaeth said, who grew up in the shop that her parents opened in 1969. Back then, Central was a metropolitan strip of Route 66, a place of buzzing neon signs and commerce.

“It’s devastating to see your parent’s business go,” she said, her eyes watering.

Operation Route 66 has led to a spike in arrests along the corridor.

Since February, the DA’s office reports that the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office and New Mexico State Police have arrested more than 1,000 people and have 310 open court cases, according to a social media post made by the DA last week. Of those arrests, 11 were related to homicides, while 651 were pre-existing arrest warrants.

More than 300 arrests were for probation violations. Some of those arrested are suspected of multiple crimes and violations, Laflin said. She added that law enforcement had seized more than 100,000 fentanyl pills, 77 guns and recovered 92 stolen vehicles.

“It is a massive operation that is far from over,” Laflin said.

The Albuquerque Police Department, the law enforcement agency with the biggest presence in the district, is not a part of Operation Route 66.

“We don’t anticipate joining the Rt. 66 initiative, but we appreciate any assistance we get from other agencies,” said APD spokesperson Gilbert Gallegos in a statement Friday.

‘They have nothing to lose — I have a lot to lose’

On Central and Tennessee, Pablo Espino ate lunch in the shade with his staff at Quality Auto Tire Shop on Tuesday, surrounded by towers of rubber tires. He opened the shop in 2014 and has had occasional problems with break-ins and loitering, he said.

In one case, a woman came in off the street with a bat and became extremely agitated, yelling and swinging it at employees, he said. After calling police, Espino told his staff to lock themselves inside and let her get her anger out.

Damaged property isn’t worth your life, he said.

“They have nothing to lose — I have a lot to lose,” Espino said, shrugging his shoulders.

His business is surrounded with a tall pointed fence and those living on the streets, who congregate in the shade beneath trees outside, keep to themselves, he said.

Espino doesn’t feel that their presence has negatively impacted his business much, though he’d like to see “a little more” police patrols and faster response times.

In the past six months, he said the change has been visible.

“I feel more safe with the patrols,” Espino said. “Not completely, because it’s everywhere… It’s Central.”

Closer to Louisiana and Central, Ludgie Brister III mans the cash register inside Terry’s Mini Mart. At the small grocery, which are few and far between in the International District, everything’s a family affair.

Precious Mitchell and Terrence Lynch, Brister’s aunt and uncle, own the store where they spend most days together, stocking shelves, ringing up customers and sweeping the front entrance.

Brister, the store’s manager, said he’s seen “minor changes” in the past six months, though things have mostly stayed the same. They still find broken needles and pipes near the shop, though they noticed that the streets are slightly cleaner.

Many of the market’s customers are unhoused people or sex workers who come in multiple times a day.

Their top seller? Coca-Cola.

The family tries to give back as much as they can, giving out water, barbecuing for passersby on Wednesdays and providing Narcan when someone overdoses nearby.

One time a customer came into the store in poor shape, shaking and unable to speak. Brister realized the young man was having a seizure and called for an ambulance.

But Brister said he can’t help everyone. He frequently sees what he calls a “manic attack,” where someone takes too much of a drug and becomes inconsolable and aggressive. Across the street, a person died after a particularly bad case just days before, he said.

“I do love this area for the people that’s in it, because even though a lot of people see them as a degenerate, as a disgrace, or as a street urchin, to me, my eyes, all I can see is — that was me, I just wasn’t doing the drugs,” Brister said. “It was me one day pushing my basket down the street. It was me one day waking my parents up, going, ‘Hey, look, we got to move down here.’”

Regina Maestas stood in front of the store’s large fan in a silver sequined dress, a beaded headband styled straight from the 1920s above her brows. She clutched several cigarettes between her fingers.

She didn’t buy anything, instead settling against the stucco wall outside. Maestas said she has been homeless for “quite a while.”

In the past few months, she’s been hassled more by police, she said, but doesn’t see those efforts impacting violent crime in the area.

“It’s pretty much been the same, but the police come and sweep everybody out,” Maestas said.

After a time, the people return and the cycle begins again, she said.

Maestas lolled her head and looked out toward Central. Her eyes searched the street, as if waiting for something to happen.