When you call the police, they come.
But now the police have called us, and we should come.
On Friday, in the lobby of the Public Safety Building, Chief Dave Smith of the Rochester Police Department lingered somewhere between rage and heartbreak, thundering in exasperation and emotional fatigue about one more crime and one more death and one more illustration of the fact the laws and lawmakers of the state of New York are on the side of the criminals.
This involved Thomas Chase, a 92-year-old retired college professor who spent the last 30 years as a volunteer piano player at a nursing home. Chief Smith leaned into the wreckage of Mr. Chase’s car on Thursday, his lifeblood still flowing from his shattered body, and recited the Lord’s Prayer as a service at his passing.
Mr. Chase’s car had been hit by a 17-year-old blowing like hell down East Avenue in a stolen Kia.
It was the 17-year-old and two confederates and 10 minutes before they had been one side of a shootout on Maria Street. Between then and the moment of impact there had been a car change – from one stolen Kia to another – an attempt to ram a police officer, and the headlong sprint away from the screaming blue and whites.
And then the crash into a sainted elderly man the next town over.
And that was pretty sad. But, with more than 30 years on the job, Chief Smith has seen dead people before. And with his Christian faith and the cross on his uniform denoting his chaplain training, he’s prayed for victims before.
But this was different.
Because this vehicular homicide had so many accomplices. The governor, the speaker, the majority leader, Harry Bronson, Jeremy Cooney, Samra Brouk, Jen Lunsford, Demond Meeks, Sarah Clark, and all their co-conspirators in the state capital. All have blood on their hands. All the way to their elbows. They had a part in killing Thomas Chase, and in victimizing hundreds of others who were slain, raped, beaten or robbed by criminals freed and empowered by the “criminal-justice reforms” of the Democratic Party.
That 17-year-old? The one behind the wheel and behind the crime? He is a parolee – already, at 17 – who was arrested a dozen times in Rochester alone last year for stealing cars and smashing them into businesses to steal and loot. His most recent arrest was for another stolen car in the Buffalo area four weeks ago.
He has been arrested over and over and over by the police, and turned loose over and over and over by the politicians. Raise the Age, a specific piece of legislation pushed by the governor, speaker, majority leader and every member of the local Democratic delegation to the state legislature, removed him as a juvenile from any sort of real accountability. Bail Reform, a specific piece of legislation pushed by the governor, speaker, majority leader and every member of the local Democratic delegation to the state legislature, turned him loose repeatedly with nothing more than an appearance ticket. Less is More, a specific piece of legislation pushed by the governor, speaker, majority leader and every member of the local Democratic delegation to the state legislature, made it virtually impossible for his parole to be violated, even when he was charged with subsequent felony crimes.
And so he was free.
The politicians set him free.
To get in a shootout on Maria Street, to almost smash into a cop, to kill a kindly retired professor in Brighton.
And Chief Smith stood there on Friday in the lobby of the Public Safety Building fit to be tied.
He was calling for help.
And it’s our time to answer.
The direct moral culpability of specific local and state politicians must be acknowledged and protested – by the people and the press.
Dog-and-pony show appearances in the Rochester region by the governor, speaker and majority leader should be protested loudly. Let every ribbon cutting, airport press conference and glory-seeking stop by any member of this troika of lawlessness be met with pickets and protests.
And let the local press stop being lapdogs for politicians who treat them like PR functionaries. At every appearance by visiting office holders, and at every press event or public appearance of Jeremy Cooney, Samra Brouk, Harry Bronson, Demond Meeks, Jen Lunsford and Sarah Clark, let local reporters have the courage to make every question be about criminal-justice reform. If the people, sheriff, chiefs, district attorney and activists decry the carnage imposed by these reforms, why are reporters not persistent in pressing those in power on the issue?
If the press is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, no one is more comfortable, powerful, privileged or elite in this community than those who have voted to support the laws which killed Thomas Chase and others across Rochester.
This is not a partisan undertaking – math and mail-ins assure that Democrats will win every countywide and state legislative election in Monroe County for generations to come – so the press wouldn’t be hurting the Democratic Party, with which it is apparently allied, but it would be helping the people of Rochester, which whom it should be allied.
It’s time to go Ida Tarbell and Jacob Riis on this subject. Neglect by the elites – through poisonous legislation – victimizes the people of Rochester, who are disproportionately poor and non-white. Somebody should stand up for them.
And somebody should answer the call of the police.
They did their job. Over and over and over. And Thomas Chase still ended up dead.
It’s time to answer the call.
Protest all visits of senior state officials to Rochester, and make every public appearance by Democratic state legislators a press conference on criminal-justice reforms.
It’s time all of us – the people and the press – were fit to be tied.