Troy brass: Project Sentinel reducing crime

TROY, N.Y. (NEWS10) — Mayor Carmella Mantello says Troy is making progress on its cleaner safer streets initiative thanks in part to their Project Sentinel program. “The officers that did sign up for it and were chosen have done a fantastic job,” said Police Chief Dan DeWolf.

Project Sentinel aims to gather crime intelligence and data via methods like police and civilian tips. Troy cops’ top brass says the project led to 59 arrests, the lion's share (46) of which were felonies. They’ve seized an undisclosed quantity of hard street drugs MDMA, ecstasy, and fentanyl. TPD says they've also seized 37 guns (5 of which were illegal handguns), 30% more than last year.

“Code enforcement, streets, sanitation, our community police, all tackling a certain hotspot that neighborhoods have reported to us," Mantello explained to news cameras.

Hotspots like Tyler and Second Streets dealing with drugs, and 115th through 118th Streets dealing with prostitution. Part of that effort is getting businesses enrolled in their Safe Cam program.

“If you have cameras at your residence or your business register with us so that we know that you have cameras. So if an incident occurs in that area we're able to quickly say resident A-B-C has cameras we can go right there and check with those people" DeWolf went on.

The department will even assist in setting your cameras up properly. To help with the safer streets initiative Troy is trying to recruit more police but like many capital region municipalities, they're having a hard time. TPD says it has 10-11 open police positions. However low interest in the profession and physical exam failures are negatively impacting recruitment. 

“It dwindles down pretty quickly which is why we'll probably be giving an exam every year for the foreseeable future", said DeWolf.

Overall the department says crime is headed in the right direction.

"Our shootings are shots fired are all down down down so we're very happy with that," said DeWolf. Mantello punctuated that with a knock on wood.