Rex Barron

Seven cars were clamped last year. Last month? Thirty.

Robert Hays found out about the city's parking ticket crackdown the hard way. Hays had 87 unpaid citations. Once his car got slapped with a boot on April 18, he was faced with a decision: Either pay the roughly $4,000 he owed the city or set up separate court dates to contest each violation. Hays chose the latter, and he'll have spent almost two months going to court for several hours nearly every weekday. Hays says instead of the $4,000 he would have had to cough up, he'll pay about $600 in court fees. Many of the tickets have been dismissed, he says, because the officers who issued them haven’t attended the hearings.

One project is complete. Plans develop to continue on down the tracks.

The last two railroad crossings in the North Valley have been silenced. May 27 ended eight months of construction as the project that created quiet zones in the area was completed.

Who's leaving Albuquerque? What are police cracking down on now? It's a bird, it's a plane, it's ... . And who had a physical altercation with an APD officer?

Eric Williams

Two local pick-up artists in the field

I meet Reuben Irving, aka Whisper, in an Albuquerque bar. Whisper is a pick-up artist in training.

Will 2008 be a repeat of 2004?

Farmington. A bull riding throwdown at the McGee Coliseum on the San Juan County Fairgrounds. A raven-haired girl on a white horse finishes texting a friend, crams the cell into her Wranglers and grabs an enormous American flag on a wooden pole. As “Amazing Grace” blares on bagpipes over the PA, she gallops into the arena fast enough to set Old Glory straight.

Eric J. Garcia

In early May, a Bigfoot hunter named Tom Biscardi came to New Mexico. He was following up on a few sightings and claimed that some Bigfoot lived in New Mexico caves. Biscardi took KRQE reporter Annie McCormick with him to search for the elusive creatures.

Eric J. Garcia

Dateline: Australia—A pair of burglars staged a midnight raid on a house in Melbourne last week. Unfortunately, while the burglars were prying open a window on one side of the house, police were busting down the door on the other. Turns out the house was allegedly being used for growing hydroponic cannabis and detectives were carrying out a raid to arrest the resident, a man in his 20s. Startled to find a squad of heavily armed police officers inside the residence, the burglars fled but were caught a couple of days later, according to Det. Senior-Sgt. Paul Cassidy of Melton CIU. “It is unusual,” he said.

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