The Troy, New York Police Department has come under renewed public scrutiny this month. Now the move is on to take the tarnish off the department's image.
Two Troy Police officers pleaded guilty October 16th for their role in entering an apartment without a warrant. In April 2016, Edson Thevenin, suspected of driving under the influence, was shot and killed by a Troy Police Sergeant. Those are just two examples of the kind of activities that have weakened police-community relations.
David Bissember, the City Council's Chair for Public Safety, says the panel has been talking about these issues. "One important way that we've been discussing within the city council is to make appointments to the Human Rights Commission, which we have in the city which is currently a defunct commission at this point, but we believe this is one opportunity and one avenue to continue the dialogue of how we continue the dialogue of how we improve those relationships with the police and community at large."
In January, Assistant Chief Brian Owens was sworn in as chief and immediately declared one of his first priorities would be restoring trust within the community. Owens says he has been busy. "In these past few months I've met with quite a number of people individually and neighborhood groups, different social groups. And I feel like we have tremendous mutual respect and we understand the problems, and working together I think we can solve a lot of them. Not all of them, but a lot of them. So Troy like any city is dealing with violent crime at times. Maybe not to the extent that some other cities or areas have around us, but it's an unfortunate way of life. In particular the illegal drug trade tends to lead to violence, and certainly at a minimum it leads to quality of life issues in people's neighborhoods. But the violence is what really most concerns us. As you mentioned, our previous drug unit, there was an incident, and I think the whole set of circumstances I don't fully know because I wasn't involved in any decision-making at that point which pre-dates myself and our leadership team."
Owens says the two officers involved in that incident have retired. He adds he worked with both during his 20-year career. "We'll try to take lessons learned from that and do what we can. But those officers, throughout their careers, dedicated themselves to the city. They did a lot of great work and I want that to not be lost."
Again, Bissember: "From the community at large I think these issues still are significant and issues that the community are thinking about. I don't think these issues are going way, particularly as we're still moving forward with what's happening with the Thevenin case. These are issues that are not gonna go away. We have an opportunity as a city to improve relations by doing some of the things that the police chief in terms of community policing as a priority."
Again, Owens: "I feel like we're building on a lot of things we already had. I don't wanna make it seem like the new leadership team has come in and we're re-inventing the wheel and this is all the result of our work. It's our members working hard every day. Doing the right thing. Helping the public. And I really feel like in these meetings that I'm having individually and with groups that the public by and large supports us and I feel like we have that mutual respect and a mutual understanding of each of our concerns.”
Mayor Patrick Madden, a first-term Democrat, says he is happy with the police department's new leadership. "They've demonstrated a renewed and a sincere commitment to community policing. I do believe that they understand the value of community policing. They're not doing it just because it's important to me but they value it in and of itself as well. I'm delighted with their outreach to the community, they are very engaged with a number of community groups. Internally, we're looking at past issues and developing new trainings that address things that we might have identified as shortcomings in the past."
Madden adds new technologies are being introduced, including body cams. And he says work with other departments around the region, like the DEA and FBI, has picked up under the new leadership.
