For the second time since last year, the City of Albuquerque will be filing legally to shutter Adam Food Market on Central Avenue.
The area has struggled with high crime for years. On Tuesday, officials said the store has been the location of seven homicides and an officer-involved shooting, and recently undercover officers say they were able to purchase illicit drugs inside the market.
The move to close the private business was announced Tuesday during a press conference at City Hall.
“We tried to do something about this last year and it didn’t work, so we’re going to try it again,” said Mayor Tim Keller. ”We’re not going to give up in terms of trying to keep our community safe.”
The city plans to file its new request to shutter the store – under a nuisance ordinance – with the court sometime next week.
Attorney Britany Schaffer, who represents the tenants who are buying the property, said she was shocked to hear – through a press conference – that the city is planning to refile the lawsuit.
“I’ve never been reached out to by the city telling us that they were going to be refiling,” she said. “We were in the process of trying to resolve this and our resolution efforts were continuing, so I am shocked that the city is refiling when we are undergoing settlement efforts right now.”
Schaffer said she couldn’t go into details about what those efforts are, citing client-attorney privilege, but she did say her clients had been working with the city as late as last Friday.
“The city has never reached out to us, has never told us that our settlement efforts were failing, anything to that degree. We were under the impression that we were going to be settling that case,” she said.
Hearing about this from a press conference, Schaffer said, was insulting and defamatory.
“Businesses play a role”
Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina said the city has tried to work with past and current owners of the Adam Food Market but crime still persists.
“Businesses have a role to play, especially when you’ve had seven murders right outside or on your property in the last four years,” he said.
A recent undercover operation resulted in police officers being able to purchase drugs in the store, Medina said. He said once the officers bought the drugs, they were directed to a nearby hotel to pick them up.
“We recovered a firearm and trafficking amounts of narcotics inside the premises and we’ve had some conversations with different ownership groups, of course, but the bottom line is crime continues,” he said
The store was recently purchased by new owners. APD met with them initially to discuss these issues, but Medina said they haven’t been successful in meeting with them again.
“Something needs to be done and we will continue to work through this case. We’re hoping that we’re much more successful and we have a stronger case this time to put together,” Medina said.
Incidents at 7817 Central Ave. include:
- Seven homicides since 2020
- An exchange of gunfire between an officer and a suspect that resulted in both being injured on Dec. 30.
- A man was arrested two weeks ago for battery
- Feb. 1, undercover narcotics detectives purchased drugs in the store and were sent to a nearby hotel to pick them up. Six people were arrested.
- A week later, another undercover operation resulted in searches of two vehicles. One firearm was recovered and trafficking amounts of narcotics were located
“We will continue to patrol the area”
Southeast Area Commander Luke Languit said that this location is an anchor for people who want to commit crimes and last year the police department did something different.
“We chose to take them to court under the nuisance abatement laws that we have in place,” he said. “Working with business owners in the area, we formed a coalition where several of the businesses gave their testimonies of how the criminal activity at Adam Market is affecting their business.”
During the recent undercover operations, Languit said narcotics were not only purchased inside the store but were also bought from vehicles that pulled up outside the store, and drugs were stolen from inside the store. During the operations, APD worked with the FBI to detain individuals.
“This is what happens daily despite our efforts of conducting that high-visibility patrol. We’re doing overt high-visibility control operations, we’re doing undercover operations and the criminal activity just continues,” he said.
Languit said police will continue to patrol the area to protect other businesses.
“Only on a very rare occasion”
Keller said it’s only on a very rare occasion that the city would seek to shutter a private business, but he says this business is an accessory to all of these crimes.
“So we’re going to try again with a judge to make the case that this is causing extreme harm to the neighborhood,” he said.
Keller said there were 500 calls to this location in the city’s emergency response system from November 2021 through November 2022, and in the last four years it’s cost the city at least $400,000. He said that the equation doesn’t include everything.
“This is essentially draining resources from everywhere else in our city that needs it. I think that is also why our entire city should care about this,” Keller said.