Lapel camera shows repeat offender run down by APD truck

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Lapel camera footage reveals an Albuquerque police officer purposely swerved and crashed into a man accused of trying to run over officers on several occasions in order to finally take him into custody.

On June 4, 33-year-old Danan Gabaldon was tracked by five Albuquerque Police Department officers in southwest Albuquerque. Two weeks earlier, on Memorial Day, officers shot at him after he was cornered in an apartment parking lot driving a stolen car. He escaped the Memorial Day incident.

And months earlier, in March, he was arrested after a high-speed pursuit in the South Valley in which he tried to hit BCSO deputies.

The afternoon of June 4, the officers who tracked Gabaldon made sure they apprehended him at any cost.

After months of waiting for public records requests for lapel camera video from the June 4 incident, APD handed over the footage Friday.

The footage was edited by APD to blur out undercover officers, but at times, the entire video is blurred. Another edit appears to speed up the lapel camera of an officer in an undercover truck as he swerves into Gabaldon, who was fleeing officers after they confronted him and shot at him in the stolen vehicle.

When the officers finally confronted him in the 8400 block of Camino San Martin SW, APD says he hit two undercover cars and at least two officers with the stolen vehicle. Officers fired bean bags at him as he fled, and bullet holes were seen riddling the stolen vehicle.

But despite the crashes, Gabaldon, a repeat offender, managed to get out and run. Officers are heard ordering bean bags and Tasers on him as he flees and telling fellow officers to “stay cool.”

But as he ran off, the officer in the truck took notice, hopped back in his vehicle, and ran Gabaldon down.

Once the video is slowed down, Gabaldon’s head can be seen smashing into the truck as it hits him.

A bystander’s video was also included in the public records release that shows the moments before Gabaldon was hit.

After he is hit by the truck, a different officer’s lapel camera shows officers using Tasers on him and one officer shoving his elbow into Gabaldon’s bleeding head as they try to arrest him.

It again raises the question of where the line is drawn with APD’s reigned-in use-of-force rules implemented in conjunction with an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice, though Gabaldon was a repeat car thief with a history of trying to elude and harm police officers.

Gabaldon was charged with 12 felonies and four misdemeanors for the police attacks and faces further burglary charges for a separate incident.

On June 22, District Court Judge Briana Zamora revoked Gabaldon’s bond, saying he was a flight risk and dangerous. He had previously cut off a GPS ankle monitor. He was indicted by a grand jury for the March incident and entered a not guilty plea in that case.

He remains at the Metropolitan Detention Center on a no-bond hold.

This story was originally published at KOB.com