Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan and Police Chief Eric Hawkins held the first of a promised series of “regular periodic updates” on public safety in the city on Monday. The move came after Common Council President Corey Ellis called for public safety enhancements.
Sheehan and Hawkins presented a slideshow to demonstrate that violent crime in the city is down significantly since 2020. They noted drastic decreases year after year, with Hawkins lauding a 22 percent decrease in confirmed shots fired between 2020 and 2022.
"The message to the Albany community is clear and unequivocal," said Hawkins. "The plan to address gun violence in this city is working. And it is working in a dramatic way. We identify issues three almost three years ago. We knew we had to have a plan in place. We knew we had to use our partners. We knew we had to use technology. Our officers in our detectives have been fantastic. Our detectives are closing cases and bringing people to justice at a at a clip that is just magnificent."
Statistics cited by Hawkins included the fact that there have been 13 homicides year to date.
"And what stands out to me, and I'm sure will stand out to members of our community is that 85% of those homicides had been between individuals who actually know each other," said Hawkins.
Ellis, a Democrat like Sheehan, doesn’t believe city dwellers will find Hawkins' numbers reassuring.
"From 2020 till now we've had 51 homicides in the city of Albany," Ellis said. "Four years prior to that, four years prior to 2020, we only had 19 total. So don't look at a snapshot of six or seven months and saying crime is down."
Ellis adds there's more to crime and its effect on quality of life than murders and gun violence.
"It's also about the vacancies. It's also about people who are continuously to plague our small businesses, robbing them," said Ellis.
Derek Johnson of the Second Ward is one of nine Albany Common Council members supporting Ellis' “Quality of Life and Public Protection” resolution, introduced during Monday night's meeting, to identify and designate “hot spot” areas of crime. Hawkins and Sheehan say police have already been doing that for more than a decade.
"When I hear the data that's shared, it doesn't seem consistent with the life that I'm living," Johnson said. "When you hear, gunshots, incidents reported throughout our community, and then you hear some of the numbers that they try to put forward, in front of us, they don't catch up. They don't equal up. The report that they're detailing doesn't match up with the life that I have to live every day in Albany. And so when the Common Council takes an initiative to address the complaints that we're receiving from not only the residents but the business community, it compels us to do something. And then the moment that we attempt to do something, their rebuttal is 'we're already doing that.'"
Ellis first introduced his "quality of life" initiative, challenging Hawkins to re-think the APD's approach to fighting crime, during a May council meeting.
"Chief, we have people who are being shot in broad daylight," Ellis said. "So what that tells me is this, we have this criminal element in our city that doesn't believe if they commit a crime, they're going to be caught. We have a criminal element in our city that believes during the daylight I can literally shoot someone and not be afraid of having a cop, a police officer come around the corner and catch me. "
In July, Ellis amplified his call for a clampdown on crime during a WAMC interview, sharing his concern that local residents and business owners are fearful.
"That's when as a council, as council leader and also with my fellow council members, you have to figure out what can we do," Ellis said.
Sheehan suggests the panel take a proactive stance on crime and address the underlying causes of violence.
“You know, when we saw the big increase in violence, the Common Council established a Violence Prevention Task Force. They then appointed people to that task force, but it fell to a member of my staff to actually run those meetings and manage that task force that person left city service, I don't have the capacity to do it, we've encouraged an urge the common council to hire someone to run the Violence Prevention Task Force. And that task force is designed for specifically this type of input. And it's designed for not only that type of input, but it is then supposed to take that input, make specific recommendations that would get built into our city budget, so that we can fund these types of opportunities. And so, you know, I've urged council leadership to please, please, please run the Violence Prevention Task Force, we need this type of input and these types of ideas,” said Sheehan.
Ellis maintains the solution lies in his resolution, which will be voted on by the full council at a later date.
