Mayor Jennings' quasi-humorous second campaign ad contains a number of assertions about the state of public safety services in Albany that simply do not wash.
First, the Albany Police Department practices nothing resembling "community policing" and has been steadily moving in a retrograde direction since Jennings took office. Jim Tuffey's "reorganization", closing neighborhood stations and putting cops in cars chasing statistics, slammed the door on it with great finality.
Second, on the Gun Violence Task Force, the Mayor deserves no credit for an initiative that originated with members of the Common Council and, lest we forget, Dr. Leonard Morgenbesser, and finally came into being on the momentum created by a tragic succession of crimes of violence that took the lives of several of our community's children. The Mayor hasn't even named his appointments to the implementation committee that we have set up.
Third, the Mayor's bragging about all the technology that has been given to the APD neglects to mention that dash-mounted video cameras -- a major officer safety initiative -- are not among these boons. Moreover, all the crime-mapping equipment that Operation IMPACT has paid for has made the APD less and not more responsive to community fear of crime. It has bought us Giuliani-style big city methods that simply don't fit our community. Let me offer the example of a true rising star in American policing, Commissioner Frederick Bealefeld, III of Baltimore who has seen to it that more than 2,000 Baltimore police officers soon will begin carrying sophisticated smart phones allowing them to check warrants, retrieve driver's license photos and conduct background checks on hand-held devices. His initiative is designed to get police out of patrol cars and walking the beat. In the next few months, nearly all of the department's patrol officers will receive BlackBerrys equipped with an application called PocketCop, which allows for rapid access to critical databases. The phones' built-in GPS function will also let the department track movements and deployment patterns of police, a feature that is making some officers wary. Bealefeld says that the previous generation of technological advances "made the vehicle a mobile office, except now [officers] don't leave the office." The smart phones "will help break that tether." So, our officers need a BlackBerry, some software, sturdy shoes and a warm coat and we'll have high-tech community policing.
Finally, the Mayor's constant assertion that crime statistics are the bottom line fails to acknowledge that Albany is a small city and every crime of violence reverberates and resonates among us with an emotional impact that no numbers from DCJS can overcome. We do not forget names like Kathina Thomas and Richard Bailey in our little town. Nor do we forget the fact that so many of our crimes of violence have had very young people as victims and perpetrators.
This past April, I went publicly on record calling for new leadership for the Albany Police Department. http://archives.timesunion.com/mweb/wmsql.wm.request?oneimage&imageid=7801861 I informed the officers and board of governors of the New York State Association of Chiefs of Police of my decision. I have been an associate member of their organization since 1987 and a staunch supporter of their century-long effort to professionalize police leadership and insulate the office of Chief of Police from political influence.
Mayor Jennings' continual changes in APD leadership have been, in my experience, unprecedented and a great disservice to the men and women of the APD. They deserve strong and stable leadership and a Chief who has a clear vision for their agency. (Perhaps something like this: http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=840195&category=LETTER) Our last Chief came in with the message that after more than a decade of Jennings appointments, the department was "broken" and needed his "fixing." What have they been doing all these years? Spinning their wheels? Well, Tuffey has gone and the Mayor's succession of arbitrary and capricious leadership appointments is at an end, assuming that the Common Council holds him to account in nominating a successor, if, indeed, he continues in office.
