These are the people solving the Capital Region’s most puzzling crimes: the detectives within the criminal investigative unit inside the Albany Police Department.

“There’s cases that you don’t forget,” says Detective Jonathan Buhner. “You will see everything from a petit larceny, which is someone just stealing something that’s low in value, all the way up to homicides.”

Every day looks a little different for these detectives. Their jobs include everything from looking for vehicles, executing search warrants, to searching for suspects on the run.

“And when I’m not out doing one of those, I’m here looking through case files, looking through photos, watching interviews we already recorded,” says Buhner.

Buhner is a detective in the unit, gaining the promotion just a year ago. He decided to go into criminal justice because he wanted to make a difference in the place he calls home.

“It seems like it would be more impactful working with people in the community, and ultimately working to become a detective,” he said.

The 27-year-old gained that promotion in just three years’ time. Before that, Buhner was a patrol cop, walking the beat.

“That relationship between us and the community is important. That’s why we work as diligently as we do. We try to solve every case that we get,” he added.

Now he’s still patrolling those same streets, just in a very different way.

His partner, Detective Curtis Graham, has been working alongside each him since the police academy. The two have been climbing the ranks together.

“It just helps the flow of not just a shift, but every call you go on and working cases together,” says Graham.

But every shift can change in an instant. While Spectrum News was out in the car with the detectives, they got a call over the scanner that changed their course.

“So we’re over here looking for a car and for video, but anything can happen when we’re expected to go there and help,” said Buhner.

The two were re-routed to a weapons call, responding to the patrol officers on the scene. Ultimately, the detectives’ help was not needed for the call.

But, this isn’t the case for most calls, especially after a violent summer in Albany. It’s a spike seen across the country, but also in the Capital Region.

“With the amount of work that we were working and dealing with over the summer, it’s definitely been challenging at times,” he added.

With a little more than a dozen detectives in the unit, keeping up with the spike in crimes is taxing.

“If a couple hundred crimes go on, if not a couple thousand, and you only have 15 detectives in the criminal investigation unit, that’s quite a lot of cases to go through,” Buhner said.

But it makes bringing a family justice all the more rewarding.

“When you know they’ve been caught, arrested, whether they end up in jail or not … it’s some sort of accountability,” Buhner said. “It means they didn’t get away with it. You know, you can’t reverse the crime that has occurred, but it’s at least a step in the right direction for the victim and hopefully helps their life moving forward.”