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Albany Officials Strategize To Deter Summer Crime

WAMC photo by Dave Lucas

After crime spiked the last two summers in Albany, city officials are brainstorming to avoid a repeat this year.

Summer shooting incidents and gun confiscations have been the norm in recent times, and details and witnesses have sometimes been few and far between. An annual parade of citizen-activists tried to halt the violence. The Capital Region Crime Stoppers program ramped up, offering tipsters incentives and anonymous means to report crime.

Albany Police Chief Eric Hawkins and the Common Council addressed the issue during a public safety committee meeting Monday evening. 11th ward Councilor Alfredo Balarin:   "And it was a good meeting, because it brought everyone in the room to have a good and difficult conversation, I think that's the first step to try and get everyone engaged and look at a comprehensive approach at it, at the problem. The problem starts way before people decide to pick up a gun. It starts with the environment that is created. It starts with the education system and the opportunities that they have. It starts with the safety that they feel in their neighborhood."

Hawkins says 12 of last year's 14 homicides involved a domestic dispute or drugs.   "And we had one that was a random shooting at a night club and another that was at a corner store. There was a shooting near a corner store. Out of the 14 homicides we had last year we had 12 arrests and prosecutions, so we made some progress, because, you know there's a lot of research out there that shows that solving and prosecuting murders is a primary way of deterring future murders in communities, so that is a very positive thing for us from an investigation standpoint."

Balarin noted  "A lot of discussion was about trying to create new summer engagement programs, try to find ways to get to kids early in the stage before, try to change the mindset of how to approach conflict, as well as try to address issues with our older community."

Balarin says the council got a head start on offsetting the likelihood people will be tempted to participate in acts of violence.   "There is no one answer for this, but there could be several initiatives. One initiative that has been brought up is trying to create safe zones for young people to know that they can go and participate in productive activities that are fun and engaging and also places that they can go and unwind. There was discussion of having job centers for people who are coming back out of our prison system, to try to link them with employers that will hire them and try to get these people jobs so that they don't feel lost or fall back into a bad environment."

Hawkins says overall crime is down. He believes what the community experienced last summer "was an anomaly."  "We see this in communities across the country where you have solid strategies in place. You have engaged members of the community. You have conscientious elected officials. And everybody's working together and you can still have a spike in certain crime categories in communities across the country and you know maybe homicides one year, and another year burglaries and maybe in aggravated assault in another year, so it's not unusual to see these types of spikes."

Balarin says the council's public safety committee will compile a list of "background initiatives" and identify which can be implemented immediately and which are long-term strategies.

Dave Lucas is WAMC’s Capital Region Bureau Chief. Born and raised in Albany, he’s been involved in nearly every aspect of local radio since 1981. Before joining WAMC, Dave was a reporter and anchor at WGY in Schenectady. Prior to that he hosted talk shows on WYJB and WROW, including the 1999 series of overnight radio broadcasts tracking the JonBenet Ramsey murder case with a cast of callers and characters from all over the world via the internet. In 2012, Dave received a Communicator Award of Distinction for his WAMC news story "Fail: The NYS Flood Panel," which explores whether the damage from Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee could have been prevented or at least curbed. Dave began his radio career as a “morning personality” at WABY in Albany.
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