This press release from the Hudson Police Department was received earlier today.
On April 16, 2025, officers from the Hudson City Police Department arrested Kyjuan W. Hotaling, 22, of Hudson, NY, and LaTrell M. Young, 22, also of Hudson, NY. Both individuals were charged with Criminal Possession of a Weapon in the Second Degree, a Class C Felony.
At approximately 11:24 a.m., an HPD unit was responding with lights and siren activated to assist the New York State Police and the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office with an attempted suicide incident in the City of Hudson. While traveling on the 300 block of Long Alley, officers observed a firearm being thrown from a vehicle directly in front of the responding unit.
The officer attempted to initiate a traffic stop; however, the suspect vehicle fled at a high rate of speed, continuing westbound on Long Alley. The vehicle was eventually stopped in the parking lot of 15 North Front Street. Both occupants were taken into custody without further incident and transported to the Hudson City Police Department.
Officers recovered a loaded Bryco 38 .380 auto handgun near the location where it was discarded.
Both Hotaling and Young were arraigned in Hudson City Court before Judge Roberts.
- Kyjuan W. Hotaling was remanded to the Columbia County Jail on $25,000 cash bail, $50,000 bond, or $75,000 partially secured bond.
- LaTrell M. Young was remanded on $5,000 cash bail, $10,000 bond, or $10,000 partially secured bond.
Both defendants were scheduled to appear in Hudson City Court at a later date.
Carol, I know your rule about commenting with full names, which I am not including, therefore I don't care if this is posted as it is for you. I highly encourage you to change the title of this post or take it down. It looks incredibly foul to have a resident of Allen St, who is not from here, to title this "we are not as gentrified as some may think." Gentrification should be something that is avoided, not the goal. We know nothing about these young men of color, 22 year olds, except that they are local. Conflating a city's lack of development with young men making a mistake or being in a bad mental place is not worthy of a blog post. In fact, many who have called Hudson home for generations, believe the city is headed in the wrong direction given the cost of living. Gentrification can increase these types of incidents as it widens the gap between residents, siphoning the community and posts like this only exasperate it. Therefore, please change the title or take the post down, it is not helpful, necessary, or true.
ReplyDeleteWe know two things about these "young men of color", as you put it: We know that their parents are the real failure and we also know that they are a product of the HCSD. Both the parents as well as whoever was the HCSD's supervisor at the time of the graduation of these two young men are the ones that should be in jail for gross negligence.
DeleteInstead, you play the victim fiddle. It's not non-local Carole's fault that these two gentlemen disposed of a handgun through the window of their car. That would be more correctly attributed to their school district and the family environment they grew up in.
No one but those are responsible for this. I agree with you that gentrification (as you call it incorrectly - it's just displacement) is something to be avoided.
Judging by your particular wording, I must assume you are a long-time or multi-generational local. What are you doing to stop Hudson's accelerating gentrification?
I have learned recently, indirectly through Theresa Joyner, that Hudson's mayor is popular with the locals because he represents the aspirational idea of becoming something even after traversing the Hudson City School District.
What it actually is is Stockholm Syndrome. Locals are fanatically beholden to a locally grown mayor who emanates good vibes while doing nothing to slow down this process of displacement that only hurts the people voting for him while it's at best a minor nuisance to those that moved here from elsewhere. I've had this very discussion with the mayor in a one-on-one and I am speaking from first-hand experience.
I believe this is a solvable problem in principle but it will not happen in a city where the locals have decided to engage in a particular form of culture war whereby anyone non-local is by default bad and has the ills of the city at heart.
HudsonNY12534--It's actually not true that we know nothing of these young men except they are from Hudson. Some may recall that one of them was arrested in August 2021 as part of what HPD described as "the self-proclaimed 'Men of Business' gang who have been involved in attempted murder, the illicit sales and possession of controlled substances, the possession of stolen property, illegal firearms possession, and other organized criminal gang activity, leading to violence in the City of Hudson." The press release issued by HPD at the time can be read here: https://gossipsofrivertown.blogspot.com/2021/08/new-from-hpd.html.
DeleteTVP - do you know the parents? Are you now, or have you ever been, a parent trying to shield your kid(s) from gang activity? Do you want to jail the supervisors of every school that has some graduates become criminals? Bold take.
DeleteGentrification is not a morally good or bad thing. It’s just a result of cycles of demand and investment. But if you’re against gentrification and would like to stop it, crime is a good way to do it. Keeping the schools abysmal also helps. The only other thing I can think of is petitioning Trump and Hochul to close the Amtrak station.
ReplyDeleteUmmm. Tell us again why someone from Allen Street who is "not from here" can't be upset by lethal weapons being confiscated by cops? And the reference to gentrification, a big part of which is lowering crime rates, is perfect with this story. But where 12534 really goes off the deep end is characterizing these gun-toters as merely "making a mistake" or "being in a bad mental place." Thankfully, the cops caught them before their mistakes and bad mental places made them kill somebody. --peter meyer
ReplyDeleteBad Ideas, Part 1: Excuses Excuses
ReplyDeleteHudson12534’s comments aside (if that’s possible), and in agreement with Union Jack's comment about education, this story reminds me of the revelation that turned me from a true crime reporter to a true education reporter in the early 80s: when I picked up a report about Washington DC’s adult prison population and read that the average prisoner was reading at 3d grade level. I didn’t wonder about the obvious iron-link connection between reading / writing / literacy / jobs, I blurted out (to no one in particular, “What the hell!! If public school is mandatory to the age of 16 or 17, what were these kids doing in school in fourth, fifth, sixth, etc. grades?” More appropriately, why were schools failing to their fundamental job: teaching kids. After nearly thirty years of researching the question I can report, in the words of education scholar E.D. Hirsch, “It’s not bad people, it’s bad ideas.” On the negative side, it’s those bad ideas are beliefs that schools can't overcome the challenges of poverty and parents. In fact, the reason for creating schools and making their attendance mandatory was precisely to get them away from grueling poverty and uneducated parents and teach them how to read and write. Stay tuned for Bad Ideas, Part II: Distractions. --peter meyer
Two questions: the title makes one wonder if we were “as gentrified as some may think” would local youth not be at risk for gun violence? And…does Gossips have a criteria for which press releases from the HPD it chooses to cover?
ReplyDeleteNick - Hmmmmm...
DeleteI just searched the Gossips archive with key words "press release" and HPD / Police**, and found a wide variety of positive and negative stories in the first 6 pages, covering subjects from all walks of life, gang activity but also elections, Sheriff news, HCSD incidents etc.
After all... the subject/criminal decides to take an action that leads to HPD action, and then HPD issues a Press Release.
Throwback to the 2nd degree grand larceny of an exotic bush on Warren Street... "Beware Botanical Vandals" ahhh, Hudson. 😜
Have you asked the same question to Tiffany from the Register-Star? When I search the same key words in her stories I get a very different set of stories, and no fun historical throwbacks with black and white photos. She is more of a beat reporter so writes/transcribes all events of a certain nature.
But you make a good point about the neutral dissemination of HPD Press Releases and basic communication with residents.
Can the Mayor please publish and distribute frequent (weekly or monthly?) reports on City crime?
Both basic facts… and tips for residents on how to stay safe and minimize property crime. Not everyone is on FB or IG, so maybe an email newsletter?
As Nick so wisely points out… it is often the youth who suffer the most from crime… and we should inform them directly as well as their parents.
Mayor Aide Weaver can you help?
Nick isn’t seeking enlightenment. He’s seeking impressions on a theme. Or to put it another way, he’s spinning the narrative by asking facile questions implying duplicity, scandal, etc. Fucking boring and argumentatively amoral.
DeleteThe real gangster schools are Harvard And Yale ...
ReplyDeleteWas that a joke about Hunter Biden and Clinton (YLS), or a spot on reference about Roosevelt when he said:
DeleteA man who has never gone to school may steal a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.
Leonardo, that's a joke, right? --peter meyer
DeleteA fact ...
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThe dynamic between gentrification/economic displacement and crime is, unsurprisingly, more complicated than 'as A increases, B decreases'. There are studies that point in multiple directions. In one particularly relevant case, gun violence increased 62% in gentrified neighborhoods.
ReplyDeleteI might agree with the "more complicated than" premise, but I'd love to see the report on the place where "gun violence increased 62% in gentrified neighborhoods." --peter meyer
DeletePeter - here you are. Do note that the phrase 'firearm injuries' isn't quite the same thing as 'gun violence'; I misremembered the descriptor but not the data point (yay me).
DeleteWhoops; here's the link:
Deletehttps://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/fullarticle/2809851
Chris, my malwarebytes says this is a suspicious link. Could you doublecheck? --peter meyer
DeleteHere is a link from the NIH:
Deletehttps://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37728889/
🎯
ReplyDeleteExactly.
It is also likely that large wire fraud and identity theft has gone up in the County and City now that there is slightly more money sloshing around...
Wouldn't it be more helpful simply to target ALL crime, and to try to minimize ALL crime. Ditto ethics violations.
It is a weird and anachronistic community habit, every time there is a violent crime or gun/drug related crime, to try and silence the messenger... by making vague accusations of discrimination... or arguing false equivalence... "but rich people steal more!".
The County now has a Democratic District Attorney who literally had a "Conviction Integrity" unit to double and triple check any possible wrongful convictions in the past.
Whether it is Kamal unethically squashing his parking tickets, a Hudson resident and gang member selling drugs and cruising around with an illegal gun, non-residents voting as residents, County employees being generous on their own overtime... all the way up to email phishing and wire re-routing, the county's large identify theft challenges, or even OFAC violations... we should halt all of it.
There is a reason why Singapore and New Zealand have such a high quality of life...
Bad Ideas, Part II: Distractions
ReplyDeleteSo, if poverty and bad parents don’t explain why HCSD can’t seem to educate our kids (i.e. something better than 30% at grade level reading), what does? It’s not more bad excuses, say most reputable educators I know who have worked with low-performing schools. In his new book, “A Nation at Thought,” David Steiner, a former Chancellor of the NY State Education Department, puts the problem right up front, chapter two, which he calls “The Great Distractions.” Included in those distractions are many of our current HCSD Superintendent Pennyman’’s much promoted – and now richly funded and already deeply embedded -- “six keys for school improvement.” Most are in Steiner’s great distractions because they don’t move the needle on literacy/reading scores. They include teaching “the whole child,” “twenty-first-century skills,” “internet literacy,” “critical thinking,” “teamwork,” “growth mindset,” “grit,” “social and emotional learning,” “metacognition.” Much of this has been around for several decades, Steiner points out, enough time to study the results of these practices on student achievement (in the academic sense). “At its heart,” says Steiner, “the new learning isn’t new and it isn’t about learning.” There’s plenty more of this research. Hudson needs a Board of Education that will look at the best evidence and take the appropriate actions to get our children – all of them -- a good education.
--peter meyer