FBI gears up to battle violent crime
Agency partners with local law enforcement to target repeat offenders
James C. Langenberg started with the FBI as a street agent in Albuquerque in 1996, ultimately devoting many of the next 22 years to the world of FBI counterintelligence in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere.
When he returned nearly a year ago to head the FBI office here, Langenberg was in for a shock. He found a much different place than when he left in 2001.
“It’s just a more violent city,” he said, with repeat offenders “terrorizing” the community.
When Langenberg worked here in the late 1990s, New Mexico wasn’t one of the most dangerous states in the country. Armed robberies had not yet surged, but in 2018, the state was No. 1 per capita in armed robberies.
Just this month, one of Langenberg’s off-duty FBI agents fatally shot a man involved in a domestic dispute at a Northeast Albuquerque brewery, according Albuquerque police.
Soon after his return last August, Langenberg, special agent in charge of the Albu
querque Division, decided to raise the FBI’s crime-fighting profile by creating an FBI-led task force with state and local police partners to identify, locate and arrest repeat violent offenders.
Since the task force was approved April 1, some 40 people have been arrested and 58 firearms have been seized as evidence.
Before that, the FBI, Albuquerque Police Department’s Violent Crime Armed Robbery Unit and the New Mexico State Police Investigations Bureau formed an ad hoc task force in late 2018 to target repeat violent offenders, FBI spokesman Frank Fisher said. That led to the March 29 “Operation Blockbuster,” when another 32 people were arrested and 24 firearms seized in Southeast Albuquerque.
“One of the biggest challenges is to mitigate violent crime and arrest those repeat offenders who are terrorizing our community,” Langenberg said. “So I believe through the strong partnerships that we have (with other law enforcement agencies), building this task force really provides a laser focus on specific individuals to be picked up and prosecuted for their crimes.”
It took nearly six months to get FBI approval — and funding — from FBI headquarters for the task force. Proving the need for such a concentrated effort was a matter of citing the FBI’s own Uniform Crime Statistics.
While the task force was being developed, the FBI was busy in other areas.
Over the past year, the FBI in New Mexico arrested two members of an alleged armed militia patrolling the southern New Mexico border; investigated a Taosarea compound where the body of a 3-year-old boy was found buried, and five of its residents were indicted on terrorism-related charges; charged a Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist with lying about contacts with China; and brought a former Albuquerque Catholic priest accused of molesting more than 35 children back to New Mexico, where he was convicted of sexually assaulting an altar boy in the early 1990s.
Fighting violent crime in the metropolitan area is another challenge.
Data for the first six months of this year show the U.S. Attorney’s Office has filed nearly double the number of cases as in the same period in 2018. The cases involve robbery, carjacking and felons in possession of firearms.
Federal court records show the task force investigations included:
■ The June arrest of 17-year-old Nathaniel Valenzuela after the teenager was seen on social media site Snapchat brandishing an AR-15 pistol and selling fentanyl pills disguised as prescription painkillers.
In the state’s Children Court system, Valenzuela would likely have been handled as a juvenile delinquent and released pending further resolution of his case, said Bernalillo County District Attorney Raúl Torrez.
That’s because the teenagers alleged crimes, despite their potential lethality, wouldn’t have met the criteria under existing state law for him to be prosecuted at the more serious level of youthful offender.
Torrez’s office turned the case over to federal prosecutors, who can ask a federal judge to try him as an adult.
Joshua Silva, 35, who was arrested by State Police in January after a uniformed officer spotted him driving a 2019 Cadillac sedan north on I-25 at about 100 mph. After being stopped and exiting the car smelling of alcohol, Silva reentered his car, took off and crashed into two vehicles at the bottom of the freeway ramp after running a red light. One of the vehicles hit was an occupied Albuquerque police patrol car. Silva was later found hiding in a Dumpster. A search of his vehicle turned up a stolen short-barrel rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun, a Glock pistol, ammunition, marijuana, seven plastic bags of cocaine and 53 counterfeit oxycodone tablets believed to be laced with fentanyl.
Silva’s criminal history includes three convictions in 2017, including aggravated battery against a household member, aggravated fleeing a law enforcement officer and breaking and entering.
He had three other prior convictions dating back to 2004, including aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
Silva is set for trial at the end of July on federal drug and firearms charges, which carry tougher penalties than provided by state law.
Torrez lauded the new Violent Crime Task Force for bringing together federal, state and local law enforcement partners to help make the overloaded criminal justice system more efficient and the community safer.
“It’s exactly what we need,” he told the Journal.
SNM prosecution
Langenberg touted the recent efforts of the FBI in dismantling the murderous Syndicato de Nuevo Mexico prison gang. Gang members were prosecuted on charges of racketeering conspiracy that relied on violent crimes to further the interests of the gang.
The lead FBI case agent in that SNM investigation is now running the new Violent Crime Task Force, Langenberg said.
The 4-year-old FBI-led prison gang investigation, dubbed “Operation Atonement,” led to the arrest and conviction of more than 100 SNM members and associates who were apprehended inside prison, on the streets of Albuquerque and elsewhere on state and local charges. The operation also solved at least seven cold case murders, court records show. Many of those prosecuted had lengthy criminal records in the state system.
Two weeks ago, five SNM defendants were sentenced to life in federal prison as part of the prosecution that was triggered after the FBI got a tip that SNM leaders planned to murder top state Corrections officials.
Long-term plan
Langenberg said he hopes the FBI’s Violent Crime Task Force will be a permanent fixture in the Albuquerque metropolitan area.
“I think we’ve evolved tremendously as an organization since I was here before,” Langenberg said. “The partnerships are so much stronger than they were 20 years ago.”
So far, State Police, the APD, the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office have dedicated agents, he said. Sharing information and collaboration is the key, he said.
“We anticipate making a very large splash in the community.”