ALBANY COUNTY — A year after the violent uprising in Albany in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple said, “Last year was a sad day in Albany County.”

He said that “things quelled” after an uptick in violence and he wanted to “kill off a few rumors … people saying how dangerous the city of Albany is.”

“There are isolated incidents in certain parts of the city,” he said at a press briefing held Friday morning by Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy.

McCoy urged residents, “You can make a difference with peaceful protest” but condemned “bad apples” who hurt the places where city residents live and work.

“What is that doing to your neighborhood?” he asked.

McCoy also said he was tired of hearing “snitches get stitches.”

“There’s bad people in your community,” McCoy told city residents, “and we need your help to get rid of phlegm to stop violence.”

For a year, the sheriff’s deputies have worked in the city with the Albany Police Department.

“The APD is a great professional police agency, but they’re short and we were asked to come in and help them,”said Apple. The county, he said, puts in between six and 12 cars a shift.

Governor Andrew Cuomo this month also asked the state police to help.

Apple said his strategy was to focus on low-level crimes.

“We will continue to enforce every law in the city of albany. We will start with the broken-window theory,” he said, referencing a theory introduced by social scientists in the 1980s and used in New York city in the 1990s. The theory holds that targeting minor crimes, like vandalism, creates an atmosphere of lawfulness, preventing serious crimes.

“We’ll start small and we’ll work our way up,” said Apple. “I firmly believe, if we can knock off a lot of the low-level stuff, a lot of the big stuff will take care of itself. And we want the criminals to know you are not welcome in the city of Albany.”

Apple also said of the approach, “It’s ruffling a lot of feathers because we’re going to focus on the low-level stuff, the Vehicle and Traffic stuff.”

This includes vehicles with no license, no plates, fake plates, or no insurance, he said.

“There have been a few chases,” said Apple.” He also said that vehicles, weapons, and drugs have been recovered.

“We’re going to continue to saturate the city until things quell and quiet down,” he said, noting his department — which formally had patrolled rural areas without their own police forces —would be working in the city “for the foreseeable future.”

Shootings, Apple said, have quieted down, and he likes to think it is because of the saturation and high profile.

Some days, deputies ride with city police and other days they ride solo, he said.

He’s heard it called “an occupying force.”

“I don’t believe that,” said Apple. “It’s about making people and the residents of the city of Albany feel safe ….It’s pretty sad when people are afraid to put their child on the front to play, out of fear of catching a ricocheting bullet … Enough is enough.”