UPDATE: After shooting death, one arrested before Mayor's special meeting
Crime -- and what to do about it -- was the focus of a standing room-only meeting at Troy City Hall Monday night.
More than 100 people turned out for the meeting called by Mayor Harry Tutunjian in the aftermath of a still unsolved fatal street shooting Tuesday night in which 29-year-old Jimmy Chapman died.
Police executed a search warrant at 448 1st St. Monday evening in connection with Chapman's homicide, and arrested 30-year-old Tyrone Howard on weapons possession charges. They seized a loaded pistol grip shotgun and a Romanian SKS assault rifle, along with over 300 rounds of ammo. Tyrone's connection to Chapman, if any, wasn't immediately clear.
At the mayor's special meeting hours after the raid, the mayor's office wanted to address the concern around neighborhood crimes.
"If you're being terrorized by kids in your neighborhood, go to their landlord's house and tell those people you won't put up with this no more," said one woman.
Another man asked the Mayor and the police chief, "What are you going to do about gangs in Lansingburgh?"
Mayor Tutunjian planned to tell city residents that the police chief plans to re-allocate where police officers are placed around the city and at what times.
Tutunjian said some officers who had been working 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. might now work 4 p.m. to midnight, or from midnight to 8 a.m.
But people at the meeting called for better enforcement of the city's teenage curfew. Others said it was time to bring in the State Police to clamp down on street violence, while yet others said the city should invest money in more after-school programs for young people.
The Mayor and the police command listened patiently to those gathered in the City Council Chamber. They faced on onslaught of visibly agitated residents who were looking for answers to help restore peace in their neighborhoods.
But many who attended the meeting did not swallow the data coming from City Hall that crime was down in Troy. One after another, they told the mayor, "I don't feel safe in my neighbhorhood."
