Monroe County Executive Adam Bello says he's allocating $8.5 million to the Monroe County Sheriff's Office to help combat violence and illegal guns both in the City of Rochester and the entire community. That money will pay to hire and train 11 new deputies. Those deputies will be allocated partly to the sheriff's Tactical Unit, where Sheriff Todd Baxter says they'll double the size of that unit.
The tactical unit responds to major and to violent crimes, and that will include both in the suburbs and in Rochester city neighborhoods, backing up city police.
One deputy will be assigned to work on controlling the flow of illegal guns into Rochester, on the successful model of the Heroin Task Force. And other deputies will work with an intervention team including social workers and clergy that will go to homes of people arrested for gun violence, and see what they can do to break that cycle.
Finally, new resources are being put into developing relationships with inmates about to leave the Monroe County jail, looking to find ways of guiding and keeping them from committing new crimes after they get out. Without that, Rochester Mayor Malik Evans said jail becomes a revolving door.