A group of teens were angry. They were so angry that their group conversations on social media became violent. Those conversations, police say, led to the fatal shooting of a teenager at an Albuquerque park and life-changing criminal charges for three teens.
Damion Alday, 19, was killed on December 27 at Sundoro Park in Northwest Albuquerque. Evangeline Garcia 17, her brother Paul Garcia 15,and their friend Andres Herrera 17, are each charged with an open count of murder, conspiracy, and tampering with evidence in Alday’s homicide.
Police say the three teens killed Alday because his sister cooperated withRio Rancho Police last year after a group crashed a stolen car.
Both the Albuquerque Police Department and the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office say they’ve seen an increase in juveniles carrying firearms over the past several years. However, only BCSO was able to provide data for the past couple of years that bore this out.
APD also reports the ages of children carrying these weapons are decreasing.
The stats
The Second Judicial District attorney’s office told City Desk ABQ there were more than 200 juvenile cases involving firearms in 2023, but they did not have statistics for previous years. A spokesperson provided a list of 223 cases — including more than 100 where teenagers were charged with unlawful possession of a handgun by someone under 19 or unlawful carrying of a firearm on school premises.
Of those cases, 31 were referred to their office from the Albuquerque Public Schools, according to the DA’s Office spokesperson. She said some cases are still under review and numbers can change daily.
BCSO reported that from Jan. 1, 2021 to Dec. 31 2021, they had three cases where juveniles were arrested with firearms.
From Jan. 1, 2022 to Dec. 31, 2022, BCSO reported 14 cases of juveniles arrested with a firearm.
The county saw the largest increase last year. Between Jan. 1, 2023 to Dec. 31, 2023, BCSO reported 27 cases of juveniles arrested with firearms.
Kids with ghost guns
Jeffery Barnard, the interim commander for APD’s Investigative Services Division, said one of the reasons there are so many underage individuals carrying firearms is that they’re more accessible.
“Some firearms are being stolen and kept, some are being stolen and sold, and others, colloquially known as, ‘ghost guns,’are being manufactured,” Barnard said.
Ghost guns are unserialized and untraceable firearms that can be bought online and assembled at home.
“We’ve seen an uptick of youth having access to guns and utilizing them in various crimes,” he said.
Barnard said his unit has seen kids as young as 13 on the streets and in possession of firearms.
Both APD and BCSO said many of the cases involving youth carrying firearms also involve auto theft.
“We’ve also had incidents where we have groups involved in some sort of youth violence, like at a party where they’ve been involved with a gun crime,” Barnard said.
Youths caught with firearms weren’t getting booked
There was a period of time, Barnard said, that APD would arrest juvenile offenders and they wouldn’t get booked into the juvenile detention center.
“This included some incidents where juveniles were in possession of firearms,” he said.
Barnard said the youth would still have to face the charges against them, but they’d get released back to a parent or guardian and they would give a report to juvenile probation.
Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen said often these youths would be released back to their families without authorities having a thorough knowledge of the dynamics of the child’s family before the child was caught with a firearm.
“They’re not even paying attention to the child to begin with or know what they’re doing anyway. They’re going to go out and do the same thing,” Allen said.
Because the youth weren’t being booked into the juvenile detention center, Barnard said people didn’t feel like there was as much punishment as there used to be or even fear of being incarcerated.
“I think it created an environment for a lack of accountability that increased or emboldened them to commit other acts,” Barnard said.
That’s recently changed though. Now the detention center is booking more juveniles charged with firearm crimes.
Violence intervention
David Richter, who leads the juvenile justice unit at the Law Offices of the Public Defender in Albuquerque, said he believes the reason there are more cases of juveniles carrying firearms in Bernalillo County is because lower-level youth-related crimes have decreased.
Last year in Bernalillo County, Richter said the LOPD handled about 340 juvenile cases.
Though he didn’t have the actual number, Richter said about 50% of juvenile cases now involve firearms, whereas in prior years only about 10% of the cases may have involved firearms.
One of the reasons lower-level crimes amongst youth are decreasing is due to violence diversion programs, Richter said.
“Cases that used to get filed in court and go through the system are now generally handled by diverting and [getting the kid] the services, rather than coming to the court’s attention,” he said.
Social media and guns
It isn’t just in Bernalillo County where there’s an increase in youth carrying firearms. Sheriff Allen said the increase is nationwide, and part of the problem is that it’s sensationalized on social media, and that’s where they’re often obtaining the firearms from.
According to a National Public Radio report, between 2014 and 2021 there was a 91% increase of homicides among youth between 15 and 19 years old, nationwide.
“It’s very easy for them to get a gun, and get it in 30 to 45 minutes,” Allen said.
One of the problems with social media is that many of the companies are based overseas and don’t fall under the jurisdiction of American law enforcement, said BCSO Lt. Russell Broyles. Often the different platforms don’t collaborate with law enforcement.
“They just ignore it,” he said. “Also, they have internal policies in which they delete material very quickly and criminal elements take advantage of that. They use it to communicate with each other, and to sell their illegal materials, whether it’s to children, about children or drugs.”
Det. Taylor Feist, also with BCSO, said kids are smart and know how to use social media to their advantage. One of the things they do is create new accounts, so transactions can be done anonymously.
“When these kids are meeting up to buy guns they don’t know names, they just have a phone number or a WhatsApp, something that really doesn’t identify that person at all,” she said. “It’s really hard to trace where these kids are getting these guns from.”
Richter said many of the firearm cases the LOPD sees involve some aspect of social media, whether the youth purchase firearms through different platforms or threats going back and forth.
“Portraying yourself one way or tough, and trying to resolve any kind of perceived slights you may see with a weapon,” he said.
New prevention programs are in the works
BCSO Det. Russell Broyles said BCSO is currently working on a couple of different ways to prevent youth from having firearms. One of the programs they’re trying to implement is their own Violence Intervention Program (VIP) in some of the area schools.
Jayme Fuller-Gonzales, a BCSO spokesperson, said the county is currently in the research phase of establishing their own Violence Intervention Program and is looking into how it will be funded.
“We want to partner with the city when it comes to the VIP that the Sheriff creates and see the need to have a close working relationship with them as we begin and grow our program. Our behavioral health manager and detectives attend the current VIP meetings hosted by the city and already work closely with them,” she said.
Once implemented, Broyles said officials from the program will be able to meet with individuals and get them services in order to prevent them from going down the path of violence.
Both APD and BCSO are also working with CrimeStoppers to put portals on student’s tablets and computers so that they can report criminal activity anonymously.
“There’s a lot of good kids who areafraid of retaliation or of gun violence. They’ve lost friends to gun violence so Crimestoppers is great because it's anonymous. They can tell us what’s going on and try to prevent gun crimes, especially at school, but even outside of school,” Det. Feist said.
Youth, firearms, and the law
In New Mexico, it’s illegal for anyone under the age of 19 to carry a firearm and Second Judicial District Attorney Sam Bregman recently went to area schools to tell youth that he will prosecute them if they’re found to be in possession of a firearm.
It isn’t just kids who can get into trouble if they're found with a firearm. Parents can also be charged and they need to be responsible to keep their children away from guns, Allen said.
“Parents need to understand if you have a firearm that’s unsecured — and whether or not you know your kiddo is either saying something on social media, which most parents don’t know, or they have some type of ideation, whether it’s suicidal or homicidal, or wanting to be cool and take a firearm to school — if it’s utilized in a crime, parents can be prosecuted,” he said.
“We really want to see these kids doing better”
Allen said homicides aren't the only times deputies are encountering teenagers with guns, they're also seeing accidental shootings at parties and other venues.
“We’re starting to focus on it more and making sure that kids also have different activities,” Allen said.
Preventing gun violence among youth should be a multifaceted approach, according to Allen. He said law enforcement is definitely needed in this area, but it isn’t everything.
“I also believe in early intervention,” he said.
Allen also said educating both children and families about youth carrying firearms is also important.
“A lot of it too is communication (with police and deputies). We don’t want to be seen as law enforcement — that we’re the enemy, that we’re going to arrest you — but always know that’s a possibility. If you break the law, that’s our job by the State of New Mexico and its statutes. It’s a multi-faceted approach,” he said.
This uptick in juvenile crime, Allen said, is an example of how adults “have failed our youth,” and there should be more programs offering alternatives for them.
“Whether that’s programs for school, whether it’s education, sports, community centers, we want them to take a path for success and not a path for crime, but we’re seeing a lot of them start to choose the path of crime,” he said.
This article first appeared on City Desk ABQ and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
