Pastors on Patrol and Albany PD, six months strong
ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10) -- It’s been six months since the Albany Police Department joined forces with Pastors on Patrol, to help combat the city's hotspot areas of crime. NEWS10 checked in with the chief of police to see how things were going, so far.
The South End of Albany is considered to be one of the city's hotspot areas of crime. “We decided we wanted to focus on one of our challenged areas. We wanted to see what impact a partnership between our faith-based community and the police department can have in the community,” said Albany Chief of Police, Eric Hawkins.
Pastors on Patrol is a group of religious leaders who walk the streets of Albany to provide a presence, hoping to combat crime. Their leader, Bishop Avery Comithier said, “There [was] a lot of prostitution, a lot of needles, drugs, encampments in doorways, defecation and mental illness.”
He says things were rough when they began the patrols, but they’ve made drastic progress. “What we’ve been doing in the past six months is engaging with the neighborhoods, the residents, the business owners,” said Comithier.
Those business owners are appreciative of their efforts. The bishop says, “Cameras have been installed in the stores, more now. They are glad to see us, and we’d like to think we made a big difference.”
Chief Hawkins says crime is down. He says no homicides have been reported in the area since patrols began. He tells NEWS10 Reporter James De La Fuente, “In our major categories, we saw some decreases. We are seeing increases in some of our quality-of-life.”
Hattie’s Chicken is the newest restaurant to open up in the Southend and management there says they had their safety concerns, at first. But now, they say they are happy with what Albany leadership is doing for the neighborhood. “We started noticing that more arrests were taking place. That they had a stronger presence at the bottom of Madison Avenue, and we noticed a big improvement,” said Ed Mitzen, Co-founder of Business for Good.
As for the progress of this initiative, leaders say it is going to go places. “We're going to choose another hotspot in the city, another place where we're seeing some challenges similar to what we're seeing in this area, and we're going to start slowly deploying some of these faith-based police partnership resources to those areas,” said Hawkins. The chief says Pastors on Patrol and officers will continue to patrol the South End.
Bishop Comithier says he needs help from the community to get his group more mobile in their efforts. “We need someone who would like to donate a small, used RV or give financial support to get one.” He says anyone interested in helping Pastors on Patrol can call (518) 396-8816.