Businesses along Central near Tramway are uniting to fight crime.
Wednesday they had a face-to-face meeting with the Albuquerque Police Department and presented a plan.
It’s an interesting part of Central, there are restaurants, new stores and a new movie theater. However, a lot of the old problems still remain.
If you drove by the McDonalds on Central near Tramway Wednesday morning you might have seen the “Coffee with a Cop” sign. Inside plans were brewing for a new strategy to tackle crime.
“we already have really good neighborhood watches here. now with the business alliance that’s going to give you guys a new way to talk to each other,” said APD Sgt. Larry Middleton.
The long-troubled stretch of East Central is undergoing a revival with new development drawing shoppers, diners and moviegoers.
The area is still a hotspot for the homeless, drug addicts, car thieves and armed robbers.
Businesses and people who live in the bordering neighborhoods like Four Hills and Singing Arrow are fed up with the crime.
“We firmly believe that if you know your neighbor, and you have a conversation with your neighbor, things work the best,” said McDonald’s owner Larry Garcia.
Albuquerque Police say the next step could be a private Facebook or Nextdoor page for the businesses so they can share information on troublemakers and crimes with each other and with police.
“If you have a guy who every time he comes in causes a disturbance with the customers, he’s intoxicated, now it gives you a chance to say look out for this individual,” Middleton said.
The meeting also served as a pep rally to get people excited about banding together.
APD would be tapped into the private business alliance page. The alliance would also be the first of its kind in the Foothills Command, which covers all of Albuquerque east of Eubank.
