Thousands of nails intentionally scattered across roads in Guilderland and New Scotland has led the Albany County Sheriff’s Office to investigate.

Albany County Sheriff's Inspector J.T. Campbell said there had been approximately 20 different incidents. Police have a “couple” of leads, Campbell said, but declined to elaborate. 

“We’re asking for the public’s help,” he said. If residents can review any camera footage they may have or if they see something, “please call us,” because, “obviously, it sounds like it’s not a big deal, [but] we’re actually putting people’s lives in danger.”

Route 156 has been the hotspot, with half of the incidents taking place on Altamont-Voorheesville Road, although none have actually happened within the Altamont village boundaries. 

Deputy Robert Wilber, going door-to-door, on Route 156, asked residents this week if they had seen anything suspicious. He said the nail drops were made after darkness fell on Saturdays and Sundays and that his office was aware of 11 vehicles being affected.

Campbell said some of the incidents took place on Depot Road, which runs from Guilderland Center to Voorheesville, where its name changes to School Road at the village line; a few incidents were on Route 85 in New Scotland and on the Delaware Turnpike.

The sheriff’s office first were aware of the nails, Campbell said, when three incidents took place in New Scotland on May 6 — near New Scotland and Stove Pipe roads; near New Scotland and Bullock roads, which is about a half-mile from town hall; and near Delaware and Verda avenues, which is close to the sheriff’s Clarksville station. 

The most recent incident occured on May 19, on Route 156 near Picard Road.

All the nails recovered from all the different sites have been similar, Campbell said. 

With their disproportionately large, flat, round heads, which would allow them the greatest possibility of landing spike-up when dumped out from, say, a moving vehicle, the nails appear to be roofing nails.

The person or persons involved with dumping the nails could be charged with reckless endangerment, Campbell said, which would “probably be just a misdemeanor-level [crime] right now.”

But he added, “I’m sure there’s vehicle traffic sections [of state law] for leaving debris in the roadway as well.”

Campbell also put to rest the social-media rumor of a woman, after getting a flat tire, being approached by a man in a van and the sheriff’s office subsequently running the van’s license-plate number and it finding the man was a sex offender. “There’s no truth to that,” he said.

Fire chief’s view

Altamont Fire Chief Kyle Haines has dealt with the nails on Route 156.

On May 14, Haines was driving down the Altamont-Voorheesville Road in his chief’s car and spotted a Guilderland police officer pulled off to the side of the road, but it was too late by the time he caught the shimmer of the nails and ended up driving through the scattering.

Haines turned around and helped the Guilderland officer get the nails out of the road; then he checked his own tires and found a nail in one of them, she said.

Haines had been using the chief’s car for “day-to-day operational stuff,” he said; he wasn’t responding to a call. Campbell said nails were found in two tires of a sheriff’s office paramedic vehicle.

Haines had a separate earlier incident with the chief’s car as well, but he wasn’t sure of the location or time when the incident occurred but said it was the same type of nail that had been used in the second incident. 

Haines said he didn’t have to have the tires replaced — they were able to be patched — but he said that he wasn’t sure if he’s supposed to have them replaced following such an incident. “That I’m not 100-percent sure of yet,” he said.

Cost-wise, the nails weren’t a big deal for the village, Haines said; it cost about $35 to fix the tires. “[But] the bigger issue is that the vehicle has to be taken off the road so that the repairs can be made,” he said.

The vehicle ended up not being able to be used for a “few” hours, Haines said.

Given the types of nails that were being used, Haines said, if a fire truck were to drive over them, “the meat of the tread would be able to sustain the nail just fine.” He added, “They are very heavy-duty tires … There shouldn’t be an issue.

Haines said he had the second incident posted about on the Altamont Fire Department’s Facebook page in the hope that the person who’s behind the crime saw it and felt, well, anything. But he was realistic, and said he thinks “they’re not going to feel any remorse for what they’re doing.”

But Haines is hopeful that the person or persons behind the incidents “see that they’re causing a lot of harm and potential problems for people. You know, it’s dangerous what they’re doing; they could be causing people to not respond to emergency incidents; they could be causing emergency incidents — so we want it to stop.”