Albany has seen an increase in shootings, but officials say the city is committed to reducing gun violence.
During the latest in a series of public safety updates at police headquarters Tuesday, Chief Eric Hawkins said that while homicides are down over 30%, two categories of shootings are up.
“Right now, we're up 16% in shooting incidents compared to last year, and we're up 15% with shooting victims compared to last year at this time," said Hawkins. "But it's important to note that last year we had significant decreases in both those categories. Last year with shooting victims, our shooting victims actually declined, 25% last year from the previous year. Our confirmed shots fired, our shooting incidents last year, they declined 27%. So we had some significant decreases last year in those two categories. And so when we're looking at where we are in comparison to those incidents, it's not something that's totally startling to us when we see that we're slightly ahead because we're comparing them to a period of time when we had some significant decreases.”
Hawkins noted shootings are actually down 13% compared to the five-year average.
Democratic Mayor Kathy Sheehan says the city is prepared to deal with gun violence.
“While people may still choose to bring a gun into our city and commit an act of violence, it is very unlikely that they are going to leave our city not having been arrested and held accountable for that activity," Sheehan said. "And so we want to continue to get that message out, that we have the tools in place, that we have the workforce in place, that we have a detective's office, and really throughout every rank of this police department, a laser focus on getting people who choose to engage in acts of violence off of our streets.”
Sheehan says “public safety” concerns don’t actually stem from violent crime.
“Oftentimes when people say that they're concerned about public safety, it's because they saw a homeless person when they were walking down a particular street, or they saw an individual standing at the exit ramp holding a sign, or they saw someone at a bus stop with a grocery cart full of all of their belongings," Sheehan said. "Or because they went to a park and it is unacceptable, but found drug paraphernalia, including needles there. And so that is part of a separate effort that the city is engaged in. It's part of what our neighborhood services department is focused on.”
Sheehan says the increase in unhoused people in the city has been driven by them coming to Albany seeking services. “We have people who are literally given bus tickets to come to Albany, because communities say we don't have that resource to help you. Here's a bus ticket go to Albany,” said Sheehan.
On the issue of Albany's migrant population, whose prepaid stays at area hotels expire at the end of the year, Sheehan says 95% of the asylum seekers now have work authorization.
“We still have shortages, as we know, at our healthcare facilities, our restaurants. The construction industry is booming, and we're expecting that the Livingston Avenue Bridge project is underway, Wadsworth Lab, we're expecting is going to start construction. So that's only going to continue. So the more people that we have with work authorizations, I think we'll be able to address a lot of those housing needs because they're able to work,” Sheehan said.
Hawkins, who is leaving his post for a role in Michigan, addressed a reporter's question about an Albany County official warning of migrant gang activity in the Capital Region.
This was the actual question:
“Last question.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“We recently spoke with Sheriff Apple, told us that there's a good reason to assume that there is migrant gang activity in the Capital Region. Is the city aware? How is the city hoping to address this?”
“If someone's worried about migrant activity, you know, that's fine," said Hawkins. "We're worried about that, but we're also worried about other types of activities in the city. And whether it's migrants or whether it's long-term residents or not, we're going to deal with it. We're going to identify individuals, whoever they are, who are involved in illegal activities or quality of life issues in our city. We're going to identify them. If they're involved in arrestable offenses, we're going to arrest them.”