Killing Continues
Yesterday saw the fifteenth murder in the city of Rochester for 2006. We’re looking at about 42 for the year. a rate of 19.1 per 100,000.
Democrat & Chronicle
While the 54 killings last year marked a large increase over the 35 homicides in 2004, it’s not as high as the 57 killings of 2003.
Last year’s total also returns the 10-year average to about 50 violent deaths per year, a number that seems to represent the point of equilibrium for homicides in Rochester, said Rochester Institute of Technology professor John Klofas.
“There are so many factors that are part of the problem, it’s going to take a great deal of effort to have any real, long-term effect,” said Klofas, who has worked with the Police Department to develop homicide-reduction strategies. “But it’s very, very hard to sustain that kind of effort.”
After falling behind Buffalo for the first time in several years in 2004, Rochester ended 2005 with the state’s highest homicide rate with 25.41 homicides per 100,000 people, compared with 19.79 in Buffalo, 13.27 in Syracuse and 6.6 in New York City.
Like many engaged in the issue, Klofas said he’s concerned that the sharp rise and fall of the yearly homicide totals create an ebb and flow of concern among community leaders and a tendency to put too much emphasis on short-term trends, such as the number of children who were killed last year.
Most of those deaths, while alarming, are the result of factors common to almost all of the homicides in Rochester, Klofas said. He noted that illegal guns represent the biggest common denominator among homicides, and last year 39 of 54 victims were shot to death.
They are almost exclusively young black men. And the murderers who have been caught are almost exclusively young black men.
And our mayor, the ex Chief of Police, thinks that it’s important that the downtown hotels unionize.
Am I the only one that thinks this is way out of touch?
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