Quoted Text

SCHENECTADY
Man speaks up after brutal beating
Gang of teens blamed in Hamilton Hill attack
BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter


    All he wanted was a slice of pizza and a bottle of NyQuil, but what 58-year-old Thomas Battreall got was a savage beating when he tried to walk home from a corner store last Monday night.
    What shocked him most was that his attackers appeared to be about 14 years old — and the leader was a girl.
    It started when Battreall walked out of a Hamilton Hill deli shortly after 8 p.m. — he lives just across the street. A group of young teenagers surrounded him. One asked for a dollar. He demurred, explaining that he was on unemployment. He’s a construction worker, laid off for the winter.
    He walked to the store because he had a cold and felt too miserable to cook. But a cold didn’t stop him from fi ghting back when two of the teens punched him, he said.
    The first blow missed, but the second knocked him to the ground.
    “I went down, but I’m from Manhattan, OK? We don’t give up. They got my cellphone. They wanted my wallet,” he said.
    He fought wildly in a brawl that went on for several minutes, he said. Finally, someone came out of a nearby building and shouted, “Break it up!”
    The teens ran. One of them took off with his wallet, but Battreall didn’t have the strength to follow — his shoulder was dislocated and one of his fi ngers broken. He lay there, in the street, as police arrived.
    As he lay there, he made a decision: He wasn’t going to keep quiet about this.
    “I think a lot of this is not reported because of the gangs. People are scared,” he said. “This is a neighborhood where people don’t snitch. To hell with that [expletive].”
    He gave the police full identifi cations of each attacker — their clothes, their sizes, anything that could distinguish them. Then he went to his neighbors and asked them to help identify the teens. When a neighbor recognized one, he called police to give them the name.
    “I’m not scared,” he said. “You can’t be scared of little kids. Someone has to stand up and say, ‘Enough!’ ”
    His neighbors told him they had seen frightening muggings recently in which older men were beaten badly by teens.
    Police couldn’t confi rm those claims, saying they’ve had just one other reported mugging on Hamilton Hill in the past two weeks and the victim was a juvenile. Neighbors interviewed would not give their names, but said they had not heard of or seen any muggings in the area recently.
Battreall is worried about the next victim. “I’ve been in construction all my life. I’m in pretty good shape. They beat the [expletive] out of me,” he said. “What if it was an older gentleman? They’d kill him!” He wants the teens gone. “This is becoming a menace,” he said. Police department spokesman Sgt. Mark McCracken said investigators are working on the case in hopes of making arrests. Overall, he said, muggings are down 9 percent this year, compared with the first 10 months of last year. He acknowledged he has no way to track unreported incidents, but said police do not believe there is a growing problem there.

http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r00901&AppName=1

who cares about percentages......they don;t help the victims.....whether it's one or 10 muggings....it's one too many....

McCracken....we don;t need percentages......we need a sollution....

More EVIDENCE that the dems in the city and county do NOT care about anything outside of their precious downtown and the wealthy property owner political cronies that the DEMS have exempted from paying taxes, such that the dems are STEALING from the homeowners!

You always see things like this in a true renaissance

mike - don't know if it's fair to say the incident was due to a lack of caring on anyone's part.  

maybe they care too much

Quoted from visitor

mike - don't know if it's fair to say the incident was due to a lack of caring on anyone's part.  

Well crime and all this stuff is happening because it is more or less allowed to happen because the dems in the city and county are ignoring the neighborhoods, they steal from the homeowners in the neighborhoods via increasing the taxes to make the homeowners pay the property tax bills for the dems' rich political cronies downtown, the dems make the taxpayers pay for all the lavish new or renovated buildings downtown but the homeowners can go to hell and get cited for code violations because no one is giving them money to renovate their homes.  

It's screw the neighborhoods, pay attention to the dem cronies downtown, make sure they are well taken care of and to heck with providing resources to NECESSARY city services--whether infrastructure or public safety--services which are in the neighborhoods

I hope they catch the punks ASAP. That poor guy just minding his own business : (  McCrack says muggings down 9 percent, instead  of him quoting
statistics which don't mean a dam thing here, why dosen't the police dept get some cops on the beat here and go after the REAL criminals. Dam.

ya know what???....when you have a mother encouraging a fight and stopping traffic.....the youth is growing up to be angry...  the climate in society is what

has been thrown out by the polticians[b]....REVENGE....[/b] actually by our President...no empathy.....

compassion....sensitivity......and if you are .....you are considered weak......

it takes a strong peron to stand up to the BULLIES that are being raised today.......

and stand up to REVENGE as it was put recently to the public by our own President...

They are doing it a$$ backwards. Smart development ALWAYS starts with the strengthening of it's neighborhoods, infrastructure and schools. Creating a community that encourages and can support businesses. Once that happens, businesses would be knocking at the city doors to set up business............INSTEAD.....of the city begging businesses and bribing them with unrealistic lucrative tax and loan breaks while the neighborhoods and schools decline to substandard levels.

Bottom line here is that the down town section is better 'looking' but is still substandard and has not helped improve it's neighborhoods nor their tax base.....fact is the neighborhoods are in a decline.

.............actually.....schenectady is an urban slum!!!! It's what the liberal nut cases create best!!!

There is an argument for staring with downtown because it is symbolic of the health of the City.  People who do not live in the city and see the improvements downtown and perceive the city as doing
better.

The neighborhoods get a  lot of police attention, but clearly more is needed - and the problemm is not going to all get reolved thru law enforcement.  

SCUMnectady is an URBAN SLUM.............ya just can't spin it any other way!!

There is graffiti everywhere, drug dealers and drug addicts in record numbers, prostitutes, pan handlers, historically vaccant homes, a substandard school system, a questionable police force, historically high crime, historically high welfare recipients, failing infrastructure, shooters on the loose,......and we'll add record high taxes just for yucks!.....

IT'S AN URBAN SLUM!!!

Quoted from bumblethru

SCUMnectady is an URBAN SLUM.............ya just can't spin it any other way!!

There is graffiti everywhere, drug dealers and drug addicts in record numbers, prostitutes, pan handlers, historically vaccant homes, a substandard school system, a questionable police force, historically high crime, historically high welfare recipients, failing infrastructure, shooters on the loose,......and we'll add record high taxes just for yucks!.....

IT'S AN URBAN SLUM!!!

But, ...is Schenectady better off than it was a hundred years ago?

might want to check crime stats before you make a claim like that - because it's accurate.  check dcjs stats  

Quoted from visitor

might want to check crime stats before you make a claim like that - because it's accurate.  check dcjs stats  

I could care less about the stats
  It FEELS worse now than ever!