Crime flows along iconic Central Ave.

Area around street saw 36 percent of the city’s murders, 31 percent of the carjackings

Parts of Albuquerque’s most iconic street are also some of the most dangerous places in the city.

A recent study by the Albuquerque Innovation Team, or ABQ i-team, on crime concentration in Albuquerque found Central Avenue and the streets and alleys that surround it had the highest concentration of crime from 2014 through 2016.

Nearly 20 percent of robberies of individuals and 10 percent of the city’s carjackings and commercial robberies occurred there.

“If you take that Central data ... and sliced it up, you are going to find very safe neighborhoods. You are going to find blighted areas that are very high in crime,” Mayor Richard Berry said in an interview Wednesday with Journal reporters and editors. “We’re being very intentional about how we look at Central Avenue.”

If you include the area a half mile north and south of Central, the picture is even more grim.

That area was where 36 percent of the city’s murders, 52 percent of the nonfatal shootings with injuries, 31 percent of the carjackings and 45 percent of the robberies of individuals happened between 2014 to 2016, according to the study.

The stretch of land is less than 16 square miles and makes up about 8.4 percent of the city’s total land, according to the ABQ i-team’s study.

The report found five clusters where the most crime occurred in the city — and Central Avenue ran through four of those clusters.

Berry said he plans to use various strategies to address the parts of the city with high crime rates during his last few months as mayor. He said, for example, that the crime data will be used as the city starts several public safety lighting projects.

One of the lighting projects will be along Central Avenue, where the $119million Albuquerque Rapid Transit project is underway. The mayor pointed out that each new ART bus will have more than a dozen cameras, and each bus stop will have lighting and cameras.

ART is designed to turn much of Central into a mass transportation corridor that quickly transports tourists, residents and commuters and attracts new development. Public safety is a key element to its success.

Scott Darnell, the director of ABQ i-team, said that the parts of the city that are seeing a disproportionate amount of crime have historically had higher crime rates than the rest of the city. But, he said, crime has been increasing significantly in recent years.

“The analysis of crime helps make a big problem smaller and seemingly unmanageable one much more manageable,” he said.