For weeks, and probably months, teen-aged gangs have assumed and exercised tactical control of the streets of Rochester, executing people and terrorizing the community, all without effective opposition from law enforcement.
Seven people were murdered over three recent days, with three of those homicides coming after the imposition of a “state of emergency” by the city and state.
In one execution, a young man in a crowd of people outside the city’s busy bus station was shot point blank in the chest, in broad daylight, and was then stomped savagely and homicidally by two men, all under the watchful eye of a surveillance camera. In another pair of murders, two young men were chased down and shot dead as they frantically tried to flee through an apartment building. One was caught and killed in the stairwell between the first and second floors; the other met his end in a third-floor corridor.
With seven weeks left in the year, Rochester is already six homicides over its deadliest year ever, topping the mark set at the peak of the crack epidemic. At this point, the only hope is snow. Bad weather pushes victims and criminals off the streets, reducing the number of targets of opportunity, and making drive-by shootings harder.
Snow is the only hope because effective law-enforcement techniques have all been nixed by the cop-hating, race-baiting progressive politics that dominate the city and empower the politicians, activists and non-profits who preside over it. It is a perfectly woke mess, where the police chief, reacting to what is undeniably the nation’s highest murder rate, had to take pains to say the police response would be surgical and respectful.
No saturation patrols. No zero tolerance. No active engagement of loitering or menacing young men on street corners. Some few bad guys tracked down and arrested, and turned over to activist judges playing under catch-and-release rules. Residents chided for not cooperating with a police department the evening news shows is incapable of protecting them.
Some blather about “it will take a whole community approach” and a need for “more mental health services” and the police being “guardians, not warriors.” The same pointless prattle that clueless and disinterested politicians have regurgitated for years. More references to and more money for ineffective non-profits, the patronage cows of the city’s Democrat politicians. It’s not about evil, the TV camera records, it’s about a lack of jobs and recreation, and an amoral equivalency is asserted between someone in a grave and someone in a cell.
Which is all a bunch of crap.
And the odd implementation of a white supremacist’s fantasy.
How many wannabe Klansmen look at urban violence and mutter about being fine with letting black people kill each other. Ironically, that is exactly what Democrat policies do. Maybe it’s time to lift the hood and see who’s underneath.
Because the first step to protecting black civil rights is protecting black lives.
And Democrats don’t do that.
They don’t do it in Rochester, where Democrat officials have savaged and gutted the police department. And they don’t do it in Albany, where Democrat officials have passed laws making the state a gangster’s paradise. Bail is very rarely imposed, prosecution is almost impossibly difficult, sentences are short, and parole restrictions are unenforceable.
And this is the result.
Bloodshed in the streets and heartbreak in the homes. A genocide in black Rochester, ignored by a numb community now accustomed to the daily litany of ever-more heinous and heartless murders.
And official Rochester seems fine with it. Inaction out of City Hall, big anti-cop wins on Election Day, prohibitions on police presence by the school district. It’s not about the lives, it’s about the revolution, it’s about progressive orthodoxy and a narrative that enables and excuses criminal conduct.
Murderers aren’t evil, they are mentally ill. They are not society’s predators, they are society’s victims. One young man gets gunned down because another young man was deprived of needed services. It’s not the fault of the black man who pulled the trigger, it’s the fault of the white man who “made the rules.”
Black lives matter – if they are taken by a white cop. Under any other circumstance, there’s a lot of looking the other way. In Rochester, violence is not decried, it is exploited, for more face time on the evening news and more money for a pet non-profit. It’s an industry, and lost sons and fathers are just grist for the mill.
The reality is that Rochester hates its cops more than it loves its children. At least that's the case with the politicians and activists. It's more about beating back the police than it is protecting the children.
And this is what you get.
The deadliest city in America.
And our only hope is an early winter.
Because there is a war on the streets of Rochester, and Rochester isn’t fighting back.