Out-of-control party low on police radar
Swamped officers don’t respond to 911 calls until after fatal shooting
Timberly Eyssen called 911 repeatedly on July 20 to report an out-of-control party involving hundreds of people who had spilled onto the street, blocking traffic.
She told Albuquerque police dispatchers she couldn’ t get home, she was scared for her safety and that if police didn’t come, someone was going to get hurt or killed.
That is exactly what happened.
Emilio Perez, 22, was shot and killed in a hail of gunfire around 2:30 a.m. at what neighbors said was a raucous, 300-person party in the 1900 block of Buena Vista SE. A teenager and another adult also were shot and injured, and six months after the shooting, no arrests have been made.
Eyssen was not the only one to call police about the party that night. APD received at least 10 calls over a 2½-hour period, according to court documents, 911 recordings, dispatch logs and police reports obtained by the Journal.
A dispatcher told Eyssen during one of her calls that unless someone was shot, stabbed or seriously injured, police were too busy to help. Eyssen found this infuriating.
“If someone had just responded to the first or third call to shut this down, I feel like his life could have been saved,” Eyssen said. “It’s just irresponsible for the police department to show up after an event, especially when they know that there were so many phone calls.”
Police respond to calls in order of importance, and the police dispatchers decide how important a call is. In this case, Eyssen’s call was designated as a Priority 2 call, which means it’s not as important as a Priority 1 call.
“Unfortunately, we’re extremely swamped tonight with other calls. We have other calls that are immediate that we have to dispatch to first,” the dispatcher told Eyssen during one of the calls.
“So you’re telling me until it’s related to something like threat of injury or someone’s been hurt … it
has to escalate?” Eyssen asked the dispatcher.
“Unfortunately, yes,” the dispatcher responded. “That’s the way calls are prioritized that come into us. If there’s a shooting, stabbing, officers are sent to those calls first. We have to tend to those calls first.”
Albuquerque police spokesman Tanner Tixier said a loud party is typically designated as Priority 2, and unless callers have new information to report, repeated calls with the same information don’t change the priority designation.
When police respond to a party, the legal actions they can take against partiers is dependent on the situation. Tixier said police can take action against people drinking in the middle of a public street, and if they saw juveniles drinking alcohol or drug use, they could also enter an apartment. Eyssen repeatedly reported partiers drinking in the street and doing and dealing drugs.
Tixier said officers were very busy that night and couldn’t know that the party would turn deadly. Summerfest was occurring that night in Nob Hill and police say they also were responding to a report of an armed man with a baby in the house.
“We have no way of predicting when a crime will occur,” Tixier said. “We were extremely busy that night, and officers were working diligently to clear the calls as they were able.”
The force is budgeted for 1,100 officers, but there are currently only 935. When asked if it could have been a manpower issue, Tixier said he couldn’t speculate.
“We are not going to speculate what may or may not have prevented this shooting,” he said. “But we could always use more officers in the field.”
Hundreds of partiers
Eyssen was returning home just before midnight and parked in a nearby IHOP parking lot because hundreds of partiers were stumbling down her street.
Another neighbor whose call was captured on the 911 recording said she couldn’t get to her apartment, either.
“There’s a block party on my street, a bunch of people,” the caller said. “I can’t even get into my apartment because there’s a truck there.” A local landlord also called. “I got calls from my tenants, and I came down here and there’s a huge party,” he told the dispatcher. “There are over 100 people in the street. It’s really noisy and there are drugs that I can smell.”
When the police didn’t show, Eyssen said she drove to a nearby fire station to see if firefighters would help, but they said only police could shut down the party.
Then she went to Nob Hill, where officers were still blocking roads for Summerfest revelers. They said they couldn’t leave their posts.
So she threw on some old clothes, grabbed an empty beer can from the street, and stumbled down the block pretending she was drunk to try to find out who was hosting the party and what partiers were doing.
People were offering her drugs, she said, and more and more people were pouring into two parties that appeared to be converging from neighboring apartment buildings. Partiers’ parked vehicles stretched from Gibson to the University of New Mexico’s athletic complex on Avenida Cesar Chavez.
“It really got out of hand to the point where my safety was a huge concern,” Eyssen said. “I knew something bad was going to go down.”
Soon after, she went to her landlord’s house and he agreed to drive her through the crowd back to her apartment. As they were driving, she said she finally saw a police officer. He was frantically giving CPR to a bleeding man — who turned out to be Emilio Perez — on the sidewalk.
‘Hasn’t gotten any easier’
Emilio’s brother, 18-yearold Antonio Perez, rushed to the hospital emergency room with his mom when they heard about the shooting from a friend. Emilio wasn’t there. They went to the scene and saw his body on the sidewalk, surrounded by yellow crime scene tape.
“It hasn’t gotten any easier for me,” Emilio’s mom, Sylvia Perez, said in a recent phone interview. “His brother has seen him in his dreams, but I haven’t had a chance to sleep well enough to see him in my dreams. I can’t put my mind at rest.”
Nearly six months after the shooting, police have made no arrests. The family is worried that the case is cold. Antonio said the APD detective told him as much.
Tixier said the case is still active.
“Detectives are still actively working the case and are currently pursuing new leads that have recently been developed,” he said. He said police suspect gangs were involved.
The two other people who were shot — a 15-year-old and a 21-year-old — survived.
According to recent ly released police reports, the 15-year-old shooting victim told police two people at the party got in a fight and he jumped in. A group of men jumped him, then started kicking him in the head.
He got up and heard shots, which is when he realized he had been shot twice in the left leg.
Another man who drove one of the victims to the hospital told police someone called him to the party because “some shit was about to go down.” When he arrived he broke up a fist fight, but then the shooting started.
He said a man in a black shirt was firing and a second man, whom he couldn’t see, was also firing.
Police have not said if they know why Emilio was killed. His autopsy says that there was no soot or residual gunpowder on the wound or shirt he was wearing, which may mean he was shot from far away or that “there was an invervening object between the gun and the entrance wound.”
Sylvia Perez said Emilio dropped out of high school and got his GED, and quickly started a job at Sonic and then at one of the malls. From there, he went to a few call centers before landing at T-Mobile, where he worked to convince people not to cancel their phone plans.
“He had the gift of gab, and that’s why a lot of people liked him so much — because he would listen,” Sylvia Perez said. “He was a good friend to a lot of people. He was my rock.”
Eyssen said she feels for Emilio’s family.
“Just like the 911 reporter said, it took someone to get shot or stabbed or a medical emergency to get someone to respond,” she said. “At that point there’s a life taken. It’s too late.”