Götterdämmerung: Rochester Style!

 Let's face it.

Rochester has become a very dangerous place in which to live.

Last night we had four shootings within an hour, only a short distance apart from each other. This is besides the other shootings, stabbings and assaults that are now Rochester's "New Norm."

The victims were all women.

One of them died. She was the 36th victim so far this year.

Usually, shooting victims are men. 

I suppose that, in a spasm of equality, women are now considered fair game for violent death.

And the interim chief of police took off for the weekend, going on "vacation."

Despite all the Pollyannas out there trying to tout the benefits of living in our fair city, Rochester was considered to be New York State's "Murder Capital" long before Mayor Warren's administration began.

The anti-cop, pro-criminal atmosphere created by both her administration and City Council merely intensified the situation in Rochester, helping to maintain and expand its grip on that title.

The mayor's personal behavior did nothing to alleviate the situation. Rather, it proves to be an ugly reflection about what Rochester and its politics have become: A fast trip to Hell in a handbasket.

We have a Mayor's office and City Council that is increasingly anti-cop and pro-criminal. And an expensive Police Adversary Board whose only function, apart from collecting their salaries, is to annoy and harass the Rochester Police Department. We have a gum-chewing, interim police chief who is rarely to be found in Rochester, and who is neither respected nor supported by the police or the city residents. We have a demoralized and understaffed police department hard pressed to do their jobs in a city where government has encouraged people, mostly minority residents, to distrust and hate them.

Even worse, courtesy of the Bail Reform Act, we have a judiciary that turns loose violent criminals as soon as the police drag them in, allowing them to commit more crimes, knowing that progressive justice favors them because they are minorities.

And then there is Rochester's local terrorist organization, Free the People, ROC, that has been dictating to City Government its policies, and inspiring violence, rioting and looting. City Government has been happy to allow them to do as they please.

This frustrates both the police department and law-abiding citizens alike, knowing that the various branches of government that were created to provide us with peace and security as we go about our lives are incapable or unwilling to do so.

And we have crime and homicides, enough so as to discourage serious developers from considering Rochester as a site for their business interests, choosing, instead, adjacent suburban towns where things are cleaner and peaceful.

Despite all of this going around, Judge Craig Doran, appearing in blackface 33 years ago while he was in his 20's, is the major topic of conversation among the media, woke progressive politicians, Black activists and Black Ministers.

Black on Black murders and crimes don't seem to interest them much. Perhaps the rest of we Rochesterians ought to consider them to be a "cultural thing," as some Black "philosophers" and "sociologists" consider this sort of activity to be and we should ignore it.

It is, of course, racist, but if influential Black people make such statements, who are we White folk to say anything about it?

That's the problem.

Everything that has been going wrong in our city as of late has been blamed on the pandemic, White privilege, racism and the RPD.

It exonerates the government, the judiciary and the criminals from being responsible for the condition Rochester is in. 

City Government's "solutions" have been to beat their chests, chant "mea culpa," haranguing the police to be more gentle with violent criminals, to promise more subsidized housing and free money to minorities.

Reparations, they like to call it. Paying out money for slavery to people who were never slaves, paid for by people who never owned slaves.

This will make everything better.

But how will this stop Black on Black crime and murder.

It won't.

Rochester's population continues to drop as sensible people, fearing for their lives and those of their children leave for the suburbs or out of our progressive state entirely.

That makes sense, and I can't or won't fault them for their decisions. Why stay in a dying city with no real hope of remedy in the foreseeable future?

With no effective leadership and a host of buffoons playing at politics, I can't see any happy conclusions, either.