Murders in Rochester (NY) drop 31 percent in 2017

One of the challenges when dealing with chronic gun offenders is that, in many cases, witnesses and victims are uncooperative. Detectives have more difficulty building a case that they can take to court. Under the GIVE program, some of those troublemakers have been the subject of more intense investigations. Police have been able to build a stronger case for the shootings or get them off the streets through unrelated drugs or weapons charges.

[Police crime analyst] Petitti says the data show that this intense concentration of policing resources has had a measurable impact. “We had a spike in violence in 2014-15, which was the first cycle of GIVE,” Petitti said. “We saw some pretty dramatic decreases in year two and even more significant last year in year three.”

The GIVE program is just one piece of a broader anti-violence campaign. Other efforts include the new gun court, a dispute intervention program, Project Exile, and the Swift Certain and Fair program. “There’s no one approach, no silver bullet that will solve all gun crime.” Petitti said. “You really have to look at it from a bunch of different angles. We’re doing so many different things as part of our violence strategy that it may be hard, if not impossible, to figure out which initiatives more than others, is having an impact,” [police chief] Ciminelli said. “It may be all of them.”