Troy to begin focused crime-fighting initiative
TROY — The city launched Project Sentinel this week with a four-member city police team dedicated to using intelligence and data information to target crime locations.
Mayor Carmella Mantello described the initiative as a quality of life effort building on the push to make the city cleaner and safer by identifying neighborhood areas facing crime issues and moving to attack the problem. Project Sentinel “sends a clear, unequivocal message to anyone considering bringing drugs or violence into our city: we will find you and we will arrest you,” Mantello said.
“We have zero tolerance for lawlessness,” Mantello said later at a news conference.
City officials, police and community representatives gathered at the Geneva Pompey Park on Seventh Avenue to announce the program in the city’s North Central neighborhood. Police Chief Dan Dewolf said the unit of three officers and a sergeant would coordinate its activities with other department units to deal with crime issues as they arise.
“Project Sentinel, I will speak for myself, is needed in the community,” said the Rev. Charles Burke of United Ordained Church in North Central.
Mac Henderson of Central Little League in North Central said people have to love their neighborhoods.
“We are looking at better days,” Henderson said. “It’s not about the program. It’s about the progress in the program.”
The city also anticipates adding a second school resource officer to the Lansingburgh Central School District to improve safety and the quality of life, officials said.
The Project Sentinel unit will work throughout the city. Its deployment will depend in part on where intelligence and data evaluation determine where crime hotspots have developed. Dewolf said the officers are drawn from community policing and patrol.