Three weeks ago, a prominent businessman was walking down Third Street toward his office at the Niagara Office Building shortly after dark when he was set upon by a pair of bandits. Fortunately, he was uninjured, but he came away from the encounter short $300.
Two tourists were then terrorized and robbed while strolling along Rainbow Boulevard.
And two Sundays ago, a man enjoying the breakfast buffet at the Seneca Niagara Casino had his car stolen in broad daylight after having parked it on Niagara Street near the corner of Fourth Street.
Then, of course, there's the four people murdered, four people wounded and the drive-by shooting incident -- which resulted in no casualties only due to poor marksmanship -- that have occurred here in the past three weeks.
Meanwhile, city police officers are being assigned full time to the task of driving the wrong way up one-way streets and chalking the tires of parked cars in order to pad the city treasury and address the nonexistent parking "crisis" downtown.
While Mayor Irene Elia brags about her illusory budget surplus and her get-tough policy toward the city's collective bargaining units -- including the two police unions -- people are being murdered and terrorized due to a lack of even modest police protection.
No lives are more at risk than those of the few policemen left on the street. Can you imagine being the first officer on the scene, as happened recently at the corner of 29th Street and Pine Avenue, where six people have just been shot and a mob of more than 300 -- many of them armed -- is congregating?
Next year, 25 veteran officers will be leaving the Niagara Falls Police Department due to early buyouts and retirement. In their place will come two -- count 'em, two -- recent police academy graduates.
The opening of the Seneca Niagara Casino has created a prime hunting ground for street criminals, and the recent spate of murders and shootings points to the birth of a serious gang problem here.
Elia can, and does, choose to stick her head in the sand and blame the problems on out-of-town businessmen or a community she never understood in the first place. She spends most of her nights in Lewiston and couldn't care less. But her slashing of the police department ranks, and her insistence that officers spend time on revenue-producing chicken details, have made the city a far less safe place to live and work
We need more cops, and we need them now.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | July 22 2003 |