Albuquerque business owner adds barbed wire after repeat break-ins downtown

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – A downtown Albuquerque business owner added barbed wire after a man broke in, returned days later and left her waiting hours for police.

Dana Benjamin said the trouble started at her photography studio near Second and Iron on Oct. 6.

“So the top part of the barbed wire wasn’t here before,” said Dana Benjamin. “It’s like a prison yard and like that’s not what we’re going for here.”

Benjamin said someone buzzed her buzzer, climbed over her fence, broke into a truck and spent the night on the property.

“Somebody we didn’t know had been buzzing our buzzer, hopped over our fence, and proceeded to break into the truck and spend the night,” said Benjamin.

Her cameras then caught the man at her front window the next morning. Benjamin said police later arrested him and charged Stephen Shoffner with criminal damage to property. The story says it was his third arrest in less than a month.

“He wasn’t like sporadically running around like it was a smash and grab sort of thing,” said Benjamin. “He was like waiting.”

What is the city doing?

Benjamin said Shoffner returned to the property two days after he got out of jail. She said police took hours to respond that time, and she later got a restraining order.

“Two days after he got let out of jail, he came back on the property again,” said Benjamin. “Something needs to be done, and it’s all of the ownership should not be on the victims.”

This summer, metro court started a program to help people charged in certain low-level crimes. Albuquerque City Attorney Joshua Boone said the goal is to connect people to services instead of pushing them deeper into the court system.

“We want to connect them into services as soon as we can, instead of criminalizing a lot of the criminal trespass or some of the charges or the behaviors that are often associated with homelessness,” said Boone.

The charges include unlawful camping and obstructing sidewalks and roads. Between the program’s launch in July and the end of September, 1,547 cases were filed in metro court and judges settled 724.

Boone said a previous felony charge against Shoffner could disqualify him from the program, but he said leaders review eligibility case by case.

“The idea behind it then is to actually get them out of the criminal justice system, so that they’re no longer in the system, generating warrants,” said Boone.

Leaders still work on a consistent network of services to support the weekly hearing schedule, Boone said. Benjamin said she wants the city to do more to protect business owners downtown.

“It’s like somebody take some ownership here and let’s like protect the citizens of Albuquerque. What, what are we doing?” said Benjamin.

According to court records, Shoffner has multiple active arrest warrants for missing court and violating conditions of release. Court records show he is scheduled for a bench trial next week.

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