City, APD discuss response to violence after peaceful protest

Police chief says a curfew would be impossible to enforce

Monday night, as crowds gathered in Albuquerque for a second night in a row to protest against racial injustice and the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, chief administrative officer Sarita Nair joined about 30 officials from local and state law enforcement agencies to monitor the demonstrations via video at the Real Time Crime Center.

She said watching the unrest in other cities across the country as police departments cracked down and made arrests cemented her belief that Albuquerque had made the right call to not impose a curfew.

“The speed at which that enforcement escalated was really disheartening, sad, terrifying, to every single person in that room regardless of what agency they were representing,” Nair said in an interview with Journal editors and a reporter.

Both Nair and Mayor Tim Keller stressed that they considered every option and consulted with the Police Department and the governor after demonstrators smashed windows, set fires and vandalized businesses Downtown early Monday. No injuries have been reported, and two men were arrested on misdemeanor charges of unlawful assembly.

“Obviously, not taking action, we can’t have that, and we will not have that,” Keller said. “But we also don’t want to take too much action or we will end up like a bunch of other cities. … We don’t feel like we need to do a curfew at this time or bring in the National Guard … but, of course, we will if we think we need to.”

Police Chief Michael Geier said the Albuquerque Police Department didn’t have a lot of time to prepare before the first protest, on Thursday, but since then they have been making adjustments and talking with the organizers. He said the

department has also beefed up its response in partnership with other agencies, including the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office and New Mexico State Police.

But he said that the chaos that ensued Downtown a couple of hours after a peaceful march concluded Sunday night caught his officers off guard and that some had already gone home. By the time the officers were called back and set up again, a lot of the damage to businesses had already been done, Geier said.

“We got caught behind a power curve on that because we weren’t prepared,” he said. “But had that situation been part of a splinter group that broke off during the peaceful one, we would have had more than enough resources to be prepared for that.”

He said so far they don’t think a militarized response beyond the line of officers with riot gear, helmets and batons is necessary. The Emergency Response Team descended on the demonstrators Downtown and eventually dispersed them using tear gas.

But if the city imposes a curfew, Geier said, it will be nearly impossible to enforce.

“If there are 200 people out there, I can guarantee you we won’t arrest 200 people; it’s almost impossible, we could not manage that,” Geier said. “Once they call our bluff, there are more people that are going to come out and challenge us.”

Instead, Nair said, officials are monitoring the protests, blocking streets to Downtown and working on de-escalation. Monday night’s protest, in which hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets in the pouring rain to march up and down Central, never made it Downtown because APD had blocked all the entrances. The march was peaceful for its duration.

“I watched the cameras all night,” Nair said. “It was empty. The only people trying to navigate those roadblocks were people who were trying to get home. So we essentially did curtail movement and activity around Downtown last night, but also without doing anything as extreme as a curfew, and it worked.”