Albany Turns into Wild West

There has been a disturbing spike in gun violence in Albany lately. It's unsettling that it's happening at all, but it mostly bothers me that it's been getting closer and closer to my personal space. For example, last week, I was at work and all of a sudden we hear pop! pop! pop! One of our staff writers, David, looked at me and said, "That doesn't sound good." A few minutes later, our general manager sent out an e-mail confirming that those "pops" were actually gunshots and that police had sealed off the block where it had happened (one block away from our office). This was in the middle of a busy workday in broad daylight. Luckily, the gunman had bad aim (it may have had something to do with the fact that he was on a bicycle), so no one was hit.

Then, on Monday night, as I lay in bed chatting on the phone, I hear pop!--a half-dozen times. It crosses my mind that the noise could have been gunshots, but I tend to rationalize those thoughts away pretty quickly. However, my brother walks in a little bit after that (from walking the dog around the neighborhood) and reports that there were gunshots around the corner from the apartment (about one block south of us) and that this time, someone got hit (actually, we learned later, two 20-something guys got hit, and they were rushed to Albany Med--their injuries were not life-threatening), and police had sealed off that portion of the neighborhood. The gunman (a different guy than the one from before) was also on a bicycle. They haven't caught that guy yet, but they did catch the first guy.

Now, while these shootings are alarming, they are only a drop in the bucket in terms of the amount of shootings that have been happening lately. Most of them seem to be occurring in the South End, West Hill and Arbor Hill (for you out-of-towners, these are some of the really rough neighborhoods in Albany). The police chief is adamant that these shootings are not gang-related, but group-related (whatever the hell that means). What's worse, the incidents have been under-reported--apparently it's not a "shooting" unless someone actually gets hit with a bullet. Read the daily's story about the multiple shootings here.

Oh yeah, by the way, the police chief wants to shut down two of the Albany police stations, including the station in Arbor Hill. This plan was announced one day after four people got shot on the same street that the police station is on. Explain that one to me. When our paper runs our piece on this, and the shootings, I'll be sure to post a link.