Chris Churchill
Columnist blames COVID for spike in area’s shootings.
One reader who writes regularly is alarmed, understandably, by the frightening spike in violence this summer. He thinks I should take Albany’s mayor to task for it.
“I know you like to kick Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the shins when you can, but why are you as quiet as a church mouse regarding Kathy Sheehan?” he wrote, noting that he, a lifelong Albanian, has never seen anything like the mayhem of recent weeks.
“How long will you stay silent on her mishandling of the crime issue in Albany?” he asked. “What is the limit of dead and wounded that you are willing to tolerate before asking questions about her policing policy?”
No doubt, the violence has been both shocking and sickening. This month alone, through Friday, there were at least 36 shootings and four killings in the city. So far this year, eight people have been killed, more
than double last year’s total.
My letter writer isn’t the only one pointing a finger at Sheehan. You can easily find similar thoughts on talk radio and social media. And if I thought the mayor was to blame, I’d be more than willing to join in. I don’t think she is.
Sheehan didn’t put guns in the hands of the young men who open fire even in broad daylight. She didn’t give them a callous disregard for life.
She isn’t responsible for the national economic policies that have created neighborhoods of despair and anxiety in American cities.
Moreover, Albany is not alone in experiencing a surge in violence. Shootings in New York City have doubled this month, for example, and cities around the country, from Milwaukee to
Los Angeles, are reporting similar spikes. What’s happening is not a local phenomenon.
If you’re looking for something to blame, blame the coronavirus.
Sheehan and Eric Hawkins, the city’s police chief, say the pandemic has kept officers (and social workers) from the efforts that stop crime. Much of that work is focuses on stemming the urge for revenge.
There may be other pandemic-related causes. Lisa Good, executive director of Urban Grief, an Albany nonprofit focused on helping gun-violence victims, told me she believes that with more people indoors, shooters feel emboldened by the relative absence of potential witnesses.
In other words, there are fewer of what author and activist Jane Jacobs called “eyes on the street.” Busy streets are safer, but cities have been noticeably emptier during the pandemic.
I think the link between the virus and violence may go deeper. Polls show that American happiness has plummeted to the lowest level since we started trying to record it 50 years ago. The economy has been destroyed. People are restless and frightened.
None of that is a justification for shooting. But if the country as a whole is anxious, frustrated and despairing, its poorest and most desperate neighborhoods are especially anxious, frustrated and despairing. The country is a tinderbox right now, and the violence is one way the tension is showing.
How is that Sheehan’s fault? Some of you, I know, will blame the violence on the Black Lives Matter movement and calls for police reform. I don’t buy it, despite what Fox News says. Maybe it’s true that cops are feeling demoralized, but in reality the movement has changed very little about policing. Police departments haven’t been defunded just yet — and most never will be.
Obviously, public safety is a significant factor in how mayors are judged, as it should be. You can’t have economic growth without safety. You can’t have good schools without safety. It’s the foundation for livable cities, and any mayor who presides over a sustained increase in crime can expect to be voted out of office.
But if Sheehan is to be blamed for the recent rise in violence, fairness mandates she be credited for several noteworthy periods of peace since her 2013 election, including a remarkable 14-month stretch when there were no killings at all in Albany.
Consider this: The city’s violent crime rate in the six completed years after Sheehan took office is lower than for the six years before her tenure, when Jerry Jennings was the mayor. Property crime, meanwhile, has declined every year under
Sheehan and is down 27 percent since her election.
The statistics, then, belie claims that “Sheehan is mishandling the crime issue,” as my letter writer suggests, or that the men who proceeded her were somehow better at maintaining law and order. The stats suggest Sheehan’s emphasis on community policing has been working, despite what critics want to believe.
Still, if you argue that not enough progress is being made against terrifying crimes, I won’t debate. The stubborn resilience of violence in Albany (and elsewhere) is frustrating and dispiriting. We have too many guns in the hands of too many lost young men.
But the mayhem of recent weeks is bigger than Albany. It’s bigger than Kathy Sheehan, too.