Police have been busy in Albany with some notable arrests.

They’ve also been able to close seven of the eight homicides this year.

Albany Police Chief Eric Hawkins says things like vehicle thefts are down, which is significant because a lot of shootings involve the use of stolen cars.

The number of shootings is up, but those shootings appear to be more targeted.

That’s the response– and there’s a continued effort to prevent violence, especially as we head into the summer months.

“Our gun recoveries are just off the charts right now. You know, we’re double, more than double, where we were last year,” said Chief Hawkins.

Representatives from the Albany FBI and ATF New York were there as the chief talked about the work those agencies do behind the scenes and the importance of these federal partners.

In tackling crime prevention, police say they look at community calls for service, zeroing in on any location with more than nine calls in a month.

“Another example would be they might be somebody who just recently moved into an address who is suffering from a mental health crisis,” said Deputy Police Chief Vince Foley. “If we identify that, we’ll send out mental health crisis intervention team along with the Albany County Mobile Crisis Unit over to see how we can assist them better so we don’t have to keep going back to that house before it turns into something worse than it already is. We found domestic issues that way.”

They also take a look at conflict analysis, which they started three or four years ago.

“The idea of conflict analysis is you look at certain types of calls in the city and try to prevent the shooting before it happens,” said Deputy Chief Foley. “So we look at dice games. Dice games are always contentious in the city of Albany or anywhere because it involves money. We look at person annoying. Group annoying. Drug dealers. Fights. Person with a weapon.”

Foley said police map those calls and look at the density to see where they’re happening, then deploy manpower.

“We often use our partners with probation and parole to conduct home visits in that area so we can see what’s going on, what in that area is causing so much conflict and then we try to stop it before it happens.”