Mayor Evans addresses city-wide violence

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WHEC) – Rochester Mayor Malik Evans is addressing another weekend of violence.

There were several incidents this weekend, one included the shooting of a 10-year-old girl and a man killed early this morning.

Mayor Evans said the surge in violence in the city is something they are focused on addressing and said the challenge is that a lot of these violent incidents, we have innocent people getting caught up in it.

“One of the things that we want to try to get ahead of is stopping disputes before they happen,” Evans said.

Evans said the violence that has been plaguing the Rochester community should not be normalized and they are doing what they can to address it with violence prevention teams and police canvassing the areas where it’s happening

“Almost every single violent incident that we have seen, they are all tied to another incident that happened before that and it becomes a vicious cycle,” Evans said.

Monday morning, a 30-year-old man was shot and killed on West Main Street in a parking lot next to the nightclub, Minq lounge.

On Saturday, a 10-year-old girl staying at her grandma’s house is in the hospital after being shot four times in the chest when the house was shot up overnight

Over the last year, several other homes have also been hit by gunfire.

“A 10-year-old child braiding their grandmother’s hair when they decide to spray a house because the individual that they were trying to target was involved in something before,” Evans said. So the question is, how do we break these cycles? And that and that is that is where our focus is and our focus is also on the targeted areas where this is happening.”

According to recent data from Rochester Police, in Rochester by this time last year, there were 78 shootings and 21 homicides.
This year there’s been 79 shootings and now 22 homicides.

“This is not just New York State,” Governor Kathy Hochul said. “This is all over the nation. But instead of taking comfort in the fact that one of the largest big states, big cities, has one of the best crime rates, how can there be a best crime rate? It’s not a good crime rate until it starts going down.”

Mayor Evans said we have to give people hope and opportunity as it relates to violence and they need the communities help in identifying those responsible.

Evans said on Wednesday they will announce more funds they will be using from ARPA as it is for violence prevention.

As far as the status of the Rochester Police Chief search, Evans said that they have a core group of people they are looking at right now and they are close to narrowing down the group of candidates.