Local business owner waits hours for police after break-in

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – A local business owner got a call about a break-in at four in the morning, and he says the most frustrating part is how long it took police to respond.

Ronnie Clark told KOB 4 that the time it took for officers to respond to this particular break-in call was unacceptable.

“He was in there, I don’t know, for four or five minutes, alarms going off. Our alarm company automatically notifies law enforcement. So I’m sitting there watching surveillance for an hour at 5 a.m. still, nobody’s there,” said Ronnie Clark, owner of Subway.

Clark owns 10 Subways in the metro, but he lives up in Farmington. All he could do was watch and wait for police to arrive.

While he was waiting, another man appeared on camera, two hours after the first break-in.

“A guy’s walking by sees it, sees that there’s broken glass there and decides to go in, and he helps himself to chips and drink,” Clark said.

Clark calls 911 again.

“They say, well, there was nobody in the store, so it’s not really that emergency much of an emergency. But we’ll change the status now because you see someone in the store, so we’ll put it on a higher level or whatever, however they classify it,” Clark said. 

In 2023, APD boasted that they’re improving their response times to 911 calls. On average, officers respond to non-urgent Category 3 and 4 calls within an hour. But Clark didn’t get that average response time.

“Officer finally shows up at 8 a.m. So we’re on, we have a four-hour wait there at that time,” said Clark. 

When asked why it took so long, a spokesperson from APD said they are still trying to improve their response times. They also said the night of that break-in, APD officers were responding to multiple more high-priority calls including multiple shootings, a stabbing, and a fatal car crash.

In a situation like this where it appears a homeless person is the one to break in to steal food, why didn’t Albuquerque Community Safety respond?

A spokesperson from ACS told us over the phone Tuesday, even in situations where it is clear a person needs to be connected to community resources – if they commit a crime like breaking into a Subway, APD will be the first ones to respond.

That doesn’t mean ACS won’t get involved, but they will have to wait until after the criminal investigation wraps up.

If the person gets released from jail, ACS gets to step in and identify how the city can help this individual to try and prevent them from committing more crimes in the future.