When officers from the Rio Rancho Police Department first approached Patrick Ethridge, he was self-scanning a cart of groceries at a Walmart on Unser Boulevard, the city’s main drag. It was shortly after 7 p.m. on Aug. 24, and Ethridge, 47, the executive editor and vice president of the Albuquerque Journal, was wearing a motorcycle festival T-shirt with a slogan on the back: “Chasin’ Tail Raisin’ Hell.” The police told him that they’d seen his kids causing trouble elsewhere in the store.
His two teenage sons, the officers said, had been caught on camera knocking over displays and opening Monster energy drinks that they hadn’t paid for, discarding the empty cans on shelves. Now they were all wanted in the back office, where store employees would soon show Ethridge and the boys — along with a young woman whose connection to Ethridge is not made clear in the video or audio — some damning footage. Ethridge finished scanning his groceries, carefully rotating bottles of Gatorade to register every barcode, and then agreed to escort his sons to the back.
Inside Walmart’s de-facto situation room, a wall of monitors displayed vantage points from throughout the store. As Ethridge saw, customers were being watched while they opened a door in the freezer aisles, while they gawked at a $4,000 flat-screen TV, and while they rang up groceries at the same kind of self-checkout register he’d been using.
As this was going on, three responding officers stepped out of the room and leaned against a wall next to a Redbox movie rental machine. In body-camera footage obtained by Searchlight, two of them pass the time by bantering about the NFL — debating fine points like whether there’s a more unforgivable sin than being a New England Patriots fan.
One of the officers then left and went back into the room where Ethridge was still watching video. He approached another officer and leaned into his ear, his whisper barely detected by the microphones on their body cams. “I think he’s the VP of the Albuquerque Journal,” he said.
The other officer replied: “Are you serious?”
Initially, Ethridge wasn’t in trouble himself, but that soon changed. According to police reports, during the process of reviewing footage with the family, Walmart employees saw that he had been skip-scanning — placing multiple items in a bag after scanning only a portion of them. As the boys remained in the store’s back office, body cameras showed an officer asking Ethridge for his driver’s license.
“Am I being held or something?” he asked.
“You are,” the officer responded. “We have it on video of you skip-scanning.”
Ethridge asked the officer to let him pay for the groceries, but it was apparently too late for that. Store employees had taken away the unscanned food while he’d been detained, and now they wanted to press charges. Police gave Ethridge and his sons trespassing notices and ordered them not to return to the premises.
His day in court
After this initial encounter, Ethridge was given a summons to appear in Rio Rancho Municipal Court on Sept. 25 and charged with misdemeanor shoplifting. Appearing without counsel, he pleaded guilty. Judge Michael Gibson gave him a sentence of 90 days in jail, with 80 days suspended. He was set to be released from the Sandoval County Detention Center on Oct. 5, but Gibson granted his early release and “no contest” plea on Thursday, Oct. 3.
On September 26, a day after the guilty plea, his attorney, Todd J. Bullion — an Albuquerque defense attorney and former prosecutor who recently represented “Rust” armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed at her criminal trial in Santa Fe — filed a motion seeking to withdraw it. Ethridge had scanned nearly $300 of groceries, the motion said, but he was not trying to steal anything. Bullion said he’d merely been distracted by the sight of multiple police officers approaching his sons. He pleaded guilty simply to put the ordeal behind him, Bullion argued. Bullion’s motion was denied initially, but granted on Thursday.
Surveillance footage reviewed by Searchlight New Mexico makes that alibi seem unlikely. Five times, it clearly shows Ethridge scanning more than one package — including steak and a package of Jack Daniel’s pulled pork — as single items.
The Journal reported the news of Ethridge’s run-in with police a little more than a month after officers responded to the initial shoplifting call. On Thursday, Oct. 4, the paper announced that its top editor was out after less than 18 months on the job. In a release to staff, the paper’s publisher, William P. Lang, told employees that Ethridge is “no longer employed by the Albuquerque Journal.” Ethridge had been on leave since his day in court.
Ethridge did not respond to multiple requests for comment Thursday. Nor did Lang. When reached by phone, Bullion would not comment beyond saying that Ethridge pleaded guilty before he had an attorney. “People have a right to have an attorney, so that’s why we sought to withdraw his plea,” he said.
It’s unclear whether the Journal will appoint an interim editor or if it will conduct a search for his replacement. In a statement to the Journal on Thursday, Lang said that recent weeks have been “unfortunate and confusing” and added that “moving forward without [Ethridge] was our only realistic course of action.”
Ethridge had only been with the Journal for 15 months. He took over as executive editor and vice president of New Mexico’s largest newspaper on May 30, 2023. Before that, since 2008, he had led the Beatrice Daily Sun in Nebraska and had worked at small newspapers in Indiana, Kentucky, Minnesota and Iowa.
Court records in Indiana, Iowa and Kentucky show that Ethridge has no prior record beyond tickets for speeding, not wearing a seatbelt and expired parking. Real estate records in Bernalillo County show that he bought a house in Rio Rancho in August of 2023 and that his wife signed a “Sole and Separate Property Conveyance” — a document that signals the property would not be split 50/50 between the couple in the case of a divorce — over to him the same day.
Ethridge took the reins from longtime editor Karen Moses, who held a number of titles, including copy editor, managing editor and senior vice president, over the course of 42 years. In early 2023, the paper announced it would conduct a national search for Moses’s replacement. The job posting at the time advertised a salary range of $120,000 to $150,000.
In his short time at the Journal, Ethridge announced a restructuring that added two managing editors to the newsroom staff and created a position for a “good news” reporter, tasked with writing uplifting stories throughout the Albuquerque area.
On social media, Ethridge regularly posted photos of his many vehicles. One photo on Facebook shows the extra-wide driveway of his Rio Rancho house packed with six motorcycles, a 4×4 Dodge Ram pickup truck and an off-road ATV. In the photo, an American flag hanging off one of his two garages waves over the collection.
When a Searchlight reporter visited his house Thursday evening, the driveway was empty. No one answered repeated knocks at the door. The American flag was gone. A key lockbox hung from the front doorknob.
Chances are he’s been skip scanning before he was caught. It’s an art that criminals perfect. Lang’s hiring instincts are bad — the guy didn’t fit from the beginning and helped continue what has been a slow long demise of the paper.
There have been a number of departures of respected reporters from the Journal recently. And there has also been, at least from my observations, a more hostile and defensive tone emanating from the editorial department. I don’t know what Mr. Ethridge’s contributions were, but if they were major contributions all I can say is that, perhaps occasionally, karma may actually exist. And “Bon Voyage”!
His behavior after Rio Rancho Police busted him makes no sense. Why would a seasoned editor, who presumably covered a trial or police matter or two, not get a lawyer and then go ahead and plead guilty? He certainly had little knowledge of the justice system and did himself no favors.
I think he panicked and thought it was the easiest way to take care of the matter and put it behind him without any further scrutiny. Interesting but not surprising that the Journal avoided addressing it as news for a long time.
Man, that’s a weak lede…
“The editor of New Mexico’s largest newspaper has lost his job for stealing groceries at a Walmart.”
What’s with “has lost,” that’s clumsy as hell. He lost his job …
And what’s with not using “allegedly” to describe the protagonist’s actions!
Sloppy, poison pen you all got over there, eh?
It’s not “alleged.” He pleaded guilty and was sentenced.
An editor, even if innocent of theft, must be meticulous in a job like editor. To be oblivious to just the appearance of impropriety is dumb. How can anybody in a six-figure job be so stupid? In a high-profile job like that I would always assume that if I stepped outside of my home, I am on duty. Do not steal is a great mantra to remember. He has lost everything, just with the appearance of impropriety. The teens should try to learn not to steal. It will preserve their freedom, which is far more valuable than getting away with a few groceries.
“Weird”
Well written article—nice reporting. Joshua, you should apply to be the new Albuquerque Journal editor. My dad, John Henry Auran, was the editor of Skiing Magazine for 20+ years as well as several newspapers. He would never have allowed his children to act in such a disgraceful manner as Ethridge let his boys behave. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. To be distracted to the tune of $104 skip-scanning groceries is so much malarkey. His T-shirt says it all: “Chasin’ Tail, Raisin’ Hell.” Good example to set for your kids, and your profession.
Like father, like sons. Despicable criminal acts committed by those who should know better. And surprise!: They are liars in addition to being thieves. What a thankless insult to law-abiding citizens living in Crime City ABQ.
IMO, the Journal lost sufficient credibility to warrant my subscription long before this incident. Mr. Lang, for reasons unknown, replaced excellent and experienced reporters and staff with new employees from red states. The editorial page continues to be a glaring case in point.
Agreed. It’s a real disgrace and I am surprised this removal of long-term reputable journalists hasn’t been discussed more extensively in Albuquerque. The Journal likes to refer to itself as the flagship newspaper of New Mexico. That self-reference is just turned into a bad joke.
Excellent article, providing a lot of details no one else has.
One minor nit: You write “Real estate records in Bernalillo County show that he bought a house in Rio Rancho in August of 2023,” but I’m pretty sure that would be filed in Sandoval County.
A friend who has had a subscription to the paper for 42 years says that it has changed and is hyper-conservative now. They used to include some progressive views, but now it’s just one-sided to the right. Who owns the paper and what is their agenda and why are they hiring outsiders that don’t know anything about New Mexico.
Why do people of means steal like this? I recall a similar situation with a doctor from UNM Hospital. Risk your job and reputation for a few bucks?! Makes no sense.
I can imagine the reasoning in private. They will complain about whoever they imagine is getting free stuff in the country and reason that they “deserve” some of that free stuff because they are such good wholesome working people unlike those freeloading criminals.
People of all stripes justify their crimes. From the bottom to the top.
I love the subtle way this author insinuates that the “American flag” is “typical” of someone who has this type of arrogant and entitled attitude? Love for one’s country and displaying the flag within said country should never be made out as being divisive or negative… and a certain group of people (like this author) are just propagandists that insert their dangerous rhetoric anywhere they can. I for one, am sick of seeing our country separated by politics and so much hate!
You are reading into it something that was not written. What other things do you imagine are persecuting you?
Wrong, Rich.
Maybe it’s time to resubscribe. I canceled my subscription earlier this year in disgust at the nasty editorials this worm was responsible for. Good riddance.
Wow! I saw the video on YouTube before reading this article. For $100 worth of stolen groceries, he lost a six figure job and trashed his reputation. I wonder what he has done since losing his job.