People driving down Madison Avenue in Albany on July 6, 2025, stop to look at damage done on July Fourth when a flare gun was fired into an apartment building window, starting a fire that necessitated the demolition of two buildings.

It was 1969 and I was on a primitive wooden-planked raft pretending to be a ferry crossing the Douro River from Portugal to Spain, with my tiny Fiat, in the rural wilds of the Iberian peninsula. An unpleasant man named Franco ruled Spain at the time. He famously did not care for foreigners.

As we approached shore, what got my attention were two soldiers manning a machine gun behind sand bags up on the bank. The gun was pointed right at us. Rifle fire broke out nearby. I stared wide-eyed at our ferry master. He shrugged, and mumbled in broken English: ‘’Don’t worry. They’re just practicing.’’

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I flashed on this scene last week when I heard that 10 people had been shot in Albany in separate incidents on the Fourth of July. Not Gaza, Albany. According to multiple sources, all the suspects are teenagers, as were many of the victims. Reportedly, panicked crowds gathered for the fireworks during one of the shooting events behaved about the way I did on the Douro. Scared.

Former Albany County District Attorney........

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