GUILDERLAND — The year 2021 was a return to near normalcy for the Guilderland Police Department as indicated by a report released this spring.

“You know, 2020 was a tough year ….,” Guilderland Police Chief Daniel McNally told The Enterprise this week. “People were scared with the pandemic. They didn’t call the police a lot  … so we saw all of our numbers radically drop during that period of time.”

Numbers of arrests, which had dropped in 2020 — for juveniles (48 in 2020 to 60 in 2021), drunk driving (33 to 50 in 2021), traffic summons (785 more than double to 1,620 in 2021), property-damage crashes (872 in 2020 to 1,033 in 2021) — all rebounded last year after plummeting during the start of the pandemic.

McNally noted that the trend is both statewide and nationwide. “Our town people were staying home,” he said, following the guidance, “if you didn’t need to be out, don’t be out.” 

The current report, on 2021, is a return to more normal numbers, he said.

A troubling trend is the disproportionate number of arrests of Black people. 

The federal census shows the town of Guilderland, with a population of close to 37,000, is 81.3 percent white yet only 60 percent of the police arrests in 2021 were of white people. 

Thirty-two percent of Guilderland’s 2021 arrests were of Black people and 8 percent were of people of “other races.” The census shows that 4.3 percent of Guilderland residents identify as Black or African American while 4.2 percent describe themselves as being of two or more races.

The percentage of Black arrests in Guilderland was even higher in 2020, at 39 percent, compared to 51 percent white.

Asked about the disparity, McNally said, “We don’t only arrest people from our community.”

Giving an example, he went on, “So say we arrest somebody for DWI tonight. They might be from Albany, Troy, Schenectady, Colonie …. So they’re not going to be true numbers based on our demographics.”

More than half of the 486 arrests made by Guilderland Police in 2021 — that is, 225 arrests — were made at Crossgates Mall. Crossgates Mall is one place where arrests were higher in 2020 (at 283) that in 2021 (at 225).

Last year, Guilderland fielded a committee of 14 people to come up with a reform plan for the police department, which, among other issues, assembled data on Crossgates arrests.

Governor Andrew Cuomo, following the murder of George Floyd and the protests that followed had issued an executive order requiring police departments across the state to reform and reinvent themselves.

Data assembled by Guilderland’s committee showed that, in 2017, Crossgates Mall accounted for 29 percent of the arrests in town, at 305, with 30 percent being white and 51 percent Black.

In 2018, Crossgates accounted for 38 percent of 288 arrests with 28 percent being white and 56 percent Black.

In 2019, fifty-three percent of 540 arrests in Guilderland were at Crossgates Mall with 33 percent of white suspects and 53 percent of Black suspects.

In 2020, with the pandemic shutdown, 42 percent of 283 Crossgates arrests were of white suspects and 45 percent were of Black suspects.

McNally told The Enterprise last year that the committee then looked into ZIP codes of those arrested, finding “they were primarily not our residents.”

Asked if there could be prejudice on the part of police officers charging more Black than white people with crimes like shoplifting at Crossgates, McNally said, “The majority of arrests are not police-officer initiated.”

Rather, he said, the stores at the mall call on the police to make arrests when they suspect someone of shoplifting or causing disturbances.

“We have no idea of race,” said McNally.

As one of its action items under traffic enforcement, the committee last year urged, “Consider reviewing the collected data on stops and tickets to better understand causes behind the disparity of tickets issued to people of color compared to the Town’s demographics.”

This week, McNally said of the racial disparity, “It’s obviously a concern when you look at the pure numbers. Absolutely. But I don’t see any hidden cause for that. I don’t see any bias there, any profiling from what we’re looking at. Again, I really do think it’s based on who we arrest,” noting many of the addresses for arrested people are out of town.

McNally said, for example, that domestic-violence arrests are often of people who don’t live in Guilderland.

He concluded, “I don’t see any glaring issue there from how we conduct business but I do understand your concerns — and it’s strictly based on the numbers.”

Procedural justice

Guilderland Police officers undergo procedural justice training, which the annual report says assures “citizens are treated fairly and with proper respect as human beings.”

That training, McNally explained this week, goes back to 2015 recommendations made by then-President Barack Obama.

“One of the things that was determined … is that, when you have a community that has respect for the police and both ways, you do a better job at solving crimes and making communities safer,” said McNally.

After George Floyd’s murder, New York State mandated a lot of training, such as on procedural justice, McNally said.

“If you want to build community relations between the police and the community,” he said, “you have to have programs to train the officers.” 

McNally described the training as “a common-sense approach” and said, “We were probably all taught as kids … [about] being fair or being transparent in our actions, providing opportunity for voice, and being impartial in our decision-making.

“I hope we were all taught that, but this just makes what we normally would teach in our field-training program and in our day-to-day interactions with officers, a formal program.”

Similarly, McNally  said, implicit bias training is now mandated. “So that people understand their own biases … and when they’re dealing with someone on the street, they understand where they’re coming from.”

When most Guilderland officers go through the procedural just training, McNally said, they see they are already doing it. “It’s just now putting a name or a lovable to it …. Listening to somebody trying to understand where they’re coming from, being transparent in what you’re going to do … Be it an arrest or be it taking a complaint, just trying to explain and having that dialog with the community.”

The department, which has about a 30-percent return rate on its surveys, has gotten rave reviews.

Out of 35 returned surveys in 2021, everyone agreed or strongly agreed officers responded promptly, were knowledgeable, and were professional and courteous.

The surveys are sent out randomly, McNally said.

He also said that complaints are easy to file through the department’s website. “So, if you have an issue with an officer, it’s very easy to file a complaint or an inquiry into what happened there. We try to keep that as transparent as we can.”

SRO

The Guilderland Police Department has 41 officers, according to Deputy Chief Curtis Cox. Additionally, there are two animal-control officers, 11 telecommunicators, and three office staff members, he said.

The animal control officers, the report says, handled over 500 wildlife calls and over 300 stray-dog calls in 2021. Animal-cruelty calls, like barking complaints, numbered well under 100.

The department’s Community Service Unit is staffed with one full-time officer and a school resource officer as well as with an investigator who works in the department’s Criminal Investigation Division.

While a graph in the 2021 annual report shows just a handful each of child-abuse cases, sexual abuse cases, and juvenile arrests, it shows a stunning number of cases, about 700, for the school resource officer.

McNally explained that these are not cases in the sense of investigations that may lead to arrests. Rather, he said, “It might be as simple as teaching in a health class, doing a lockdown drill, monitoring a student passing in the hallway.”

This year, the Guilderland School Board approved its first contract for a school resource officer although it has had a series of officers since the end of the last century.

Officers were originally posted in both Guilderland High School and Farnsworth Middle School although budget cuts caused the district to reduce those two posts to one, shared throughout the district.

A written agreement is required by the district’s safety plan, Superintendent Marie Wiles explained earlier. The town pays the officer’s salary for the year and the school district then pays the town for the 180 days that the officer is in the schools.

This week, McNally said he had requested that, as the school district and police continue to do contracts for the school resource officer, the officer’s work be documented.

“I wanted really specific numbers for what we were doing,” he said.

McNally said he is “very much in favor” of adding another officer to the schools. “We are negotiating, we are talking about it as we are moving forward,” he said.

Asked about who has the upper hand — school administrators or the police officer — when there has been illegal activity at one of the Guilderland schools, McNally said of school administrators, “They try to manage and handle their incidents and situations in-house. And then, if it’s something that might be rising to the level of a crime, they start talking to the SRO in more detail.”

He also said, “We don’t act without the school being on board with what we’re doing.”

McNally emphasized, “The role of the SRO is to be an advocate to the students and staff … Frankly, if we’re going to make an arrest in the school of a student, we use one of our other officers to try to maintain that relationship and trust that we’re building with the students in the SRO.”

Criminal Investigation

Guilderland’s Criminal Investigation Division has three investigators who primarily handle felonies.

McNally says he “remains disturbed” that the 2014 murder of the Chen family — a mother, father, and their two young sons — at their Western Avenue home was never solved. The case was turned over to the Major Crimes unit of the State Police “because of the magnitude,” he said. 

“I know they still are actively doing everything that they can,” he said of the State Police.

While the 2021 report says identity theft has become an increasingly important crime, the division also had to handle PAUSE complaints in 2021.

PAUSE is an acronym for  the 10-point Policy that Assures Uniform Safety for Everyone, which Cuomo implemented in March 2020 near the start of the pandemic in New York.

Most of the PAUSE complaints, McNally said, came through a hotline run by the county executive’s office “and then they would push them out to us.” Officers followed up on complaints with “education and what the law is,” said McNally.

 “Lot of times stores are corporate … it’s bigger than just a mom-and-pop store,” he said, “and so there were some other layers that you reach out to, to make sure compliance is being done.”

Four cases handled by the division were highlighted in the 2021 report: a robbery at Crossgates, a series of burglaries at Crossgates, an attempted burglary at CVS linked to a burglary at Cumberland Farms, and the homicide of Kentish Bennett.

The report includes information on Bennett’s death not previously released by the police, saying the department “received an emergency medical call for an intoxicated male that fell and hit his head. The male died at the hospital and, after an autopsy, his death was ruled a homicide.”

Jason Seminary, 43, was arrested on Dec. 26, 2021 for second-degree manslaughter.

Asked this week why the charge was manslaughter instead of murder, McNally said that, while he couldn’t discuss a specific case, “Manslaughter versus murder [is] … basically recklessly versus intentionally.”

Snug

The Guilderland Police Department has a substation at Crossgates Mall, and in 2018 started a Retail Interdiction Detail, known as RID with two uniformed officers.

In 2021, Albany 518 Snug started working shifts at the mall.

Snug is not an acronym; rather, it is “guns” spelled backwards. A violence-intervention program, Snug uses a public-health approach to reduce shootings and killings.

“It was a state-funded program for inner cities throughout our state — Rochester, Syracuse, Albany, Buffalo,” said McNally. In Albany, he said, the program is run through the Trinity Alliance Church.

“What we’re trying to do there is to reduce shooting and violence using community engagement, particularly by working with children at risk,” said McNally. In Guilderland, the program is used “relatively frequently” at Crossgates Mall, McNally said.

“Our intent there is to interact with kids from the community that the members of Snug know to try to stop any kind of criminal behavior before it even begins,” McNally said.

He explained further, “Snug members are monitoring social media, whatever. And there might be dialog about an incident that might occur at the mall … They then try to get in front of that with the kids before that crime actually happens..”

McNally said the program has been “pretty positive.”

He also noted that the Guilderland Police Department is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year; he’s been with the department for 34 years.

“I think 2022 is when we’re starting to get back to some resemblance of normal as far as the pandemic,” said McNally.

He also said, “We have a great community. I think we have a great police department and we have a great relationship with the community that so many others don’t have.”