Judge detains suspect in Green Jeans burglaries
Defendant is charged in a series of break-ins near development
An Albuquerque judge ordered pretrial detention Wednesday for the man accused in a string of burglaries at and around the Green Jeans Farmery.
Nicholas Smith, 23, struggles with a “debilitating drug addiction,” according to his attorney. State District Judge Christina Argyres said Wednesday that Smith must complete a detoxification program while he’s in custody.
Smith’s former employer, Jake Jacobson, spoke in court about Smith’s fall into drug abuse and about funding Smith’s first unsuccessful stint in rehab. Jacobson also described struggling to keep his own woodworking business afloat after Smith reportedly broke in to his store and stole pricey equipment and tools.
“I really care about Nick, and I’d really like to see him get help,
and I’d really like to see him in a different position than he is right now,” Jacobson said, “but I’m also very concerned for the direction that he’s going.”
A risk assessment index designed to predict whether a defendant will reoffend or skip a future court date suggested Smith should be released and supervised by the court’s pretrial services division. Smith has no prior criminal convictions, but he has failed to appear in court twice.
But Argyres veered from that recommendation and said that she hopes the court can eventually find Smith some sort of treatment, but until then the community deserved “some relief and some comfort of knowing that enough is enough.”
Smith was arrested last week in connection to a series of breakins at the popular Green Jeans Farmery, a shipping-container development near Interstate 40 and Carlisle. Just a day after he was released in that case, he was rearrested on charges related to a series of earlier burglaries at a gas station.
A manager there called police to report that she recognized Smith, whom she’d seen on the news, from the gas station’s surveillance footage. He’s accused of burglarizing Murphy Express five times over three months, taking food and causing around $5,500 in damage. On Wednesday, the state sought pretrial detention in that case.
In the same time period, police say, Smith took more than $3,000 in cash and goods during at least eight burglaries of businesses at Green Jeans Farmery.
Owners of the Farmery took to social media to generate outrage at the lack of police action in the case even though they said they’d identified the burglar and provided his name to police along with a description of where he could be found. Smith was ultimately taken into custody by police near an arroyo close to Green Jeans.