ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – Videos show thieves breaking into an Albuquerque barber shop Wednesday night, getting away with clippers, tools, product, and a kid’s arcade machine.
Lance Garcia, the owner of Fate Barber Co., is all too familiar with break-ins at his business near Eubank and Candelaria. Three times in five years, the latest one this week. “Taking whatever they can get, literally mirrors off the walls,” Garcia said.
But he’s not the only one with boards on their doors and windows. He said several of his neighbors in the strip mall and the surrounding area have been hit over the last few weeks, many of them salons. “We see a lot of people kind of coming through, scouting out, looking in, and then days later you see break-ins and it’s been all Salon owners, I mean one of the girls across the street said it’s going to take her six months to even recover from something like that.”
The Albuquerque Police Department said salons, in general, tend to be a target for burglars. According to APD, there have been six reports of break-ins at hair salons in northeast Albuquerque specifically throughout the month of May. “From my friends, who are tattoo artists and salons, I’m very in with the community and stuff like that, and a lot of these people are getting broke in weekly, it’s kind of wild to see,” Garcia said.
Garcia said these burglars won’t stop him from doing what he loves but says it does make things more difficult. He said they plan to add bars to their windows and doors. “We got security cameras, we have had fingerprints and they have been able to ID people, and still nothing comes of it, you know what I mean, it’s just you take a big L on it,” Garcia said.
This time around, Garcia says the thieves did $7,000 in damage.