City of Rochester Priorities – Solving Violence and Crime – Rochester Mayor Malik Evans

At the September 2022 ASIS Rochester meeting, City of Rochester Mayor Malik Evans outlined the following priorities for the City of Rochester:

1. Public Safety
2. Economic Development
3. Build Neighborhoods
4. Youth Development
5. Positive Future
6. Equity and Inclusion

In discussing Public Safety, Mayor Evans pointed out that 90% of violence is confined to 10% of the area. Much of the crime is done by repeat offenders. Nearly all homicides are committed with illegal guns. In conjunction with the Rochester Police Department (RPD), Mayor Evans is looking to take a community approach to solving violence and crimes. This has three key elements:

• Prevention (Programs)
• Intervention (Stop repeat violence and crimes)
• Suppression

Prevention – Commit to programs such as workforce development targeted to young adults to give people something to live for and think twice before they commit crimes. In many cases, there is a need to change the parent to children cycle of crime as often the youth committing crimes are children of parents who have committed crimes. There is also a need for mediation programs and working with youth on the de-escalating disputes, many which start on social media.

Intervention –Focus and commit resources on re-entry programs and getting guns “off the street”. People returning after serving jail time are often not being tracked, are not going to mandated programs, obtain illegal guns, and have a higher likelihood of committing repeat crimes.

Suppression – Work in collaboration with the community to gain information that can prevent and apprehend those committing the violence and crimes. Mayor Evans indicated that overwhelmingly people of Rochester haves stated to him that they want Law Enforcement, want Accountability, want Protection. There is opportunity for collaboration in in many areas, for instance in dealing with drug overdoses as there more deaths from drug overdoses than from homicides. Areas of focused suppression include reducing the availability of opioids and other illegal drugs and targeting known individuals and repeat offenders that have illegal / ghost guns.

Working “Smarter” – Mayor Evans along with RPD are looking to use data driven intelligence to implement smarter policing strategies and getting resources deployed where they can make the biggest impact on reducing violence and crime.

How can ASIS Rochester help? Mayor Evans shared several thoughts:  working with neighborhood organizations, through mentoring programs (Pathways to Public Safety), through sharing of information, through the role of private security.

ASIS Rochester thanks Mayor Evans for speaking at our September 2022 meeting.