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| Police Chief John Tedesco announces the arrest of three people for murder (TIMES UNION PHOTO) |
I’ve been covering Troy for a long
time and never have I seen anything like what transpired over the last couple
of weeks.
Amazing, really.
A summer marked with arson, murder
and other violent crimes had tensions at a breaking point throughout the city
but nowhere were things more strained than in Lansingburgh.
And then a well-known, well-liked
couple was bludgeoned to death – Al and Maria Lockrow on Aug. 20.
Police were under the gun. The
media jumped on such stats like “the murder rate has increased 600 percent”
from last year and “per capita Troy had the most murders in the state” and they
were echoed across social media.
There were stories of parents
afraid to send their kids a couple blocks to the store or the playground and gun
shots rang out with the frequency of church bells. There were calls for more
patrols, a reinstatement of an aggressive Street Crimes Unit and cries for
someone to do something.
Then, on Friday police found the Lockrows’
blue SUV - stolen by the murderers - in a field in Columbia County. It was set
on fire, presumably, to help the two killers hide their tracks. It also kicked
off what has to be one of the best nights in TPD history.
While I’m told the car’s discovery
didn’t lead investigators to seal the deal and arrest Jacob Heimroth and Daniel
Reuter, they were Three days later. Early Monday evening, police made the first
arrest. Later that night, about 9:30 p.m., they picked up the second suspect
while he was walking around Lansingburgh. I’m not sure which one was first but
it really doesn’t matter.
Also, on Monday, police arrested
Jeffrey Brown, an 18-year-old from Cohoes, for the murder of Robert Rivera, a
54-year-old who was found shot to death in his Second Avenue apartment on June
30.
In one night, police arrested
three people for murder. Amazing, really.
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| The Lockrow crime scene |
Police Chief John Tedesco said “this
is huge for us.” He’s right. And it’s not only huge for the TPD but for the resident
too. Fueled by fear and Facebook pages and sick of the empty political
rhetoric, they were losing patience with the men in blue and their ability to
keep their neighborhoods safe.
Rallies and vigils were held to “Take
Back Troy, Tedesco and Mayor Lou Rosamilia, under increasing pressure to do
something, put 20 extra patrols on the streets and there was the very real
threat of people taking matters into their own hands.
Meanwhile, detectives were behind
the scenes working the murders of eight people in the city this year (in two of
the cases, two people were killed so it was considered one case.)
And that work paid off on Monday.
So far, police have arrested
suspects in five of those cases. And while the murder of 19-year-old Vanessa
Milligan and her unborn baby in April remains open, Tedesco indicated an arrest
there is imminent too.
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| ROSMILIA |
There are all sorts of possible
motives for the Lockrow killings – the most brutal to happen in the Collar City
in at least two decades – and I will explore them later. There are also some grumblings
about how detectives broke the case – again, I’m told the car played a small
role in it – and I will explore them too at a later date. There is also a lot
of work to do because murders may be the highest profile crimes they are far
from the most prevalent, thankfully.
Let me conclude by saying I’m one
of the first ones to criticize cops for their Cadillac contract and their
excessive OT and when they otherwise screw up. But for their work that
culminated on Monday, the entire TPD deserves a round of applause.
