Tea and Vitriol

Last night, the city of Rochester, New York "celebrated" its 60th homicide of the year. So far. It occurred on Mazda Terrace in the Northeast Quadrant, the deadliest section of the City of Rochester, just a few blocks away from where our 59th homicide took place less than 48 hours previously. We are poised to equal, if not exceed, the record-breaking number of 81 homicides in Rochester last year, which made us the fifth deadliest city in America, and the deadliest per capita. Yet Mayor Evans claims that Rochester is "unequivocally safe," despite his useless habit of declaring states of emergency throughout this summer. He has since stopped stating that such homicides "break his heart," as he occasionally did before assuming the mayoral throne. Northeast District City Councilman Mike Patterson will, every so often, comment on how terrible all the homicides and non-fatal shootings, stabbings, assaults and criminal activity are for his district. Patterson did

My bet is "Yes." From the minute Mahweak Evans won the Democratic primary vote in 2021, he was guaranteed the mayorship in November's general election. During the interim, violent crime in Rochester exploded, as did its number of homicides. In fact, 2021 was a record-breaker for the number of homicides that were committed in our fair city. Mahweak did nothing, apart from occasionally expressing that his heart was broken. Apparently, Mahweak's heart is a remarkably resilient organ. Nor did he provide Rochester with any idea about how he would combat this uptick in violence, probably because he didn't know what to do in the first place. On January 1, 2022, Mahweak was finally crowned and enthroned. He promptly announced that he would be putting all of Rochester's anti-violence programs, all stunning failures, under his control, which he promptly handed off to his cousin, Victor Saunders. There was no noticeable improvement as violent crime continued to escalate.