By: ABQ RAW staff
POSTED: 12/30/2022 @ 3:30PM
NE Albuquerque – Yesterday at 4:30PM, an Albuquerque Police Public Information Officer (PIO) sent out an email to the media saying:
Detectives are currently investigating a shooting at 1404 Betts St. NE. SWAT has been called out to assist in clearing the residence.
Media can stage at Morris Street N.E. and Bellamah Street N.E.
More details will be available as they are available.
A few months ago, APD was court ordered to put ABQ RAW back on the public information email list. Interestingly, in the last month or so, the APD Public Information e-mails have become very limited. The APD PIO has become extremely stingy about releasing any details concerning breaking news stories.
The APD public information office is ran by civilian employee Gilbert Gallegos, he earns a base salary of $111,456 a year. It is unclear on whether overtime is also available to Gallegos. The only other person who is responsible for information being released by APD is civilian employee Rebecca Atkins and she makes a base salary of $66,912 a year without her overtime being accounted for. The combined $178,368 yearly salary pay out for the APD public information office has provided zero in person press statements at homicide scenes or other violent incidents. In the recent past at homicide scenes, Lt. Ray Del Greco of the APD Violent Crimes Division would already be on scene and was allowed to give basic information and statements to the public and media about violent crime scenes. This practice abruptly stopped and no information is allowed out into the public domain from anyone. We question whether the tax payers are getting their $178,368 worth of work out of two employees who stay in the office all day and release sporadic limited emails. It is possible we could use those salary funds to employ several more PSA’s and they could be trained to do PIO duties like they are being trained to do open space duties.
Regarding the Betts case, 16 hours later, at 9:01AM, a vague e-mail was sent out to media updating the overnight situation:
Following last night’s shooting investigation and SWAT activation, no one was located inside the residence. The Homicide Unit has since taken over the investigation as the individual who suffered a gunshot wound died from their injuries.
Detectives continue to process the scene and are interviewing witnesses.
More information will be released as it is available.
ABQ RAW went to the scene at 9:15AM expecting to see homicide detectives still processing the scene as the email stated, instead we discovered a ransacked house from the SWAT call out with absolutely no police present. APD did not provide an official time that the scene was officially cleared. At the house, there was a woman outside named Audra, she was cleaning up and trying to figure out how to secure the house after the SWAT incident destroyed her home. She identified the homicide victim as Jacob Cormier.
Homicide victim Jacob Cormier.
“He got in an altercation with somebody. But, they shot him twice. They said they tried to give him mouth to mouth and it didn’t work. Cops come by they taped up the whole neighborhood of quite the perimeter, and they had his body out here for about 9 hours,” said Audra.
Audra gave us an exterior tour of the property and we noticed the house had a few security cameras installed. On three different sides of the house, the windows were all busted out. A flash bang canister could be seen on the ground in the backyard and all of the entry doors were ripped off their hinges.
An used flash bang used by APD SWAT at the residence.
Audra told us, “you know, have some respect and this guy that killed him over what. What is that important that you can’t talk to this man, you know, with respect to say. I got a problem with you, man to man. You know what I mean? Why do they have to resort to that? You know, have respect for yourself and other people? I think that would go a long way.”This was Albuquerque’s 171st homicide of 2022 with one day left in the year.
We will update the story if any arrests are made in the case.