Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - Crimes rates have been on the rise across the country over the past several weeks, particularly with gun violence.
President Joe Biden was in New York City with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday, pledging the federal government will step up its efforts against gun violence around the nation by working more closely with police and communities to stop the surge in bloodshed.
“The answer is not to defund the police. It is to give you the tools, the training, the funding to be partners, to be protectors and know the community,” Biden said.
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While the nation attempts to combat the increasing levels of crime and gun violence, Erie County is doing the same, as gun violence numbers have actually taken a downward trend since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We were obviously 'shut down' for a number of months, which coincided with the spike in gun violence that we saw here in Buffalo and in Erie County," said Erie County District Attorney John Flynn. "I remember last summer having a press conference on Memorial Day Weekend, saying, 'Listen here: We are coming out of COVID, we're opening back up, we're going to open the Boys and Girls Club is up and the YMCAs is up, and we're going to get out there and get back out in the street,' which included law enforcement and community policing and all that. Those efforts have, I think, paid off. We're kind of getting back down to our pre-pandemic numbers.
"For example: In 2019 in January, we had a one gun-related homicide that month. In 2020, we had three. In 2021, we had 10. This year, we had four in January. So we're kind of getting back down - four is more than one obviously, but we're coming back down now to pre-pandemic numbers. The same thing on non-fatal shootings: The five-year average for non-fatal shootings in the month of January between 2016 and 2020 was 16. In 2021, we had 30. It doubled, it went up 100%. This year, we've had 17 non-fatal shootings in January. So again, we're right around coming back down now to that five-year average before COVID."
There have been plenty of theories as to why the gun violence rates increased the way it did after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some people will relate it to bail reform, some will relate it to criminal justice reform, and others will relate it to the affect COVID-19 had on some people. Flynn believes it a variation of all these reasons as to why gun violence rates have increased, one way or another.
As crime rates and gun violence rates continue to rise across the country, Flynn points out the City of Buffalo and Erie County was already at this point just 12-18 months ago.
"We were at record highs," Flynn explained. "We saw from 2020, vice 2019, we saw almost 100% increase in the number of gun shootings and gun homicides. In the first six months of 2021, we saw an additional 100% increase in fatal and non-fatal shootings from 2020. So in that year-and-a-half period there, you're talking an almost 200% increase in shootings in the city of Buffalo. From that 100% increase, it went down the last six months of 2021, and it's gone down again in the first month of 2022. It's going down; we're still up over 30%, though, for non-fatal shootings vice the five-year average pre-pandemic."
Flynn also pointed out that how critical it has been for the youth of this country to have schools and other institutions back open following some tough times during the pandemic. Getting kids back active in school and in after school activities have helped keep kids stay off the streets and away from any potentially bad situations in their community.
"The No. 1 social institution that we have in this country for young people are schools. When you have them closed down like they were in 2020, that is a problem. Because now, young people have nowhere to go during the day," the District Attorney said. "On top of that, all of the after school programs, all the YMCAs, all the Boys and Girls Clubs, all of them are now closed too. So you have no outlet at all for young people, especially young people who are vulnerable to the aura of violence in certain neighborhoods, and in certain parts of the City of Buffalo. That when there's a shutdown of every outlet that a young person can engage in, that creates a problem.
"So when you open the schools back up, when you open the YMCAs back up, and the Boys and Girls Clubs back up, and now you have football practice after school, basketball practice after school and you have band, whatever it may be, you have activities, you now have other outlets for young people to go to. That I think is critically important."
Where gun violence has taken a disturbing turn over the past several months is with "ghost guns", guns that are assembled by a non-legal entity, a non-legal gun owner, or a gun shop. These ghost guns are dangerous, because they are incredibly difficult, if not impossible to track down. The problem lies in the fact that anyone can do it, anyone can look up how to do it, and some guns more than others can be made more inexpensively.
"We are seeing here in the City of Buffalo a significant increase in the number of ghost guns," Flynn said. "The homicide we had last week, where we arrested the 15-year-old and 19-year-old, that was a ghost gun. We are seeing more and more ghost guns out there, and again, the response, basically, is targeting efforts to get intelligence to find out who's making them and to get them off the street.
"Also, on the other hand, I've got to send a message too, that if I find you with a ghost gun, then I'm going to treat you harshly. I'm not going to give you a plea deal. You're going to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and that message from me needs to be out there too, as well."
So what kind of programs are the City of Buffalo and Erie County offering to people, kids and adults alike - to try and help combat the current problems associated with gun violence?
So far, Buffalo has been able to apply federal money granted to the city and put that towards various crime violence initiatives. President Biden even made mention of the city and its efforts towards improving the quality of life for every resident.
"One of the crime violence initiatives that the Buffalo Police Department is doing is called 'custom notification,'" Flynn explained. "Custom notification is where the Buffalo Police Department is basically searching social media. They're on social media, looking for individuals who are either flashing weapons, taking pictures with weapons, making threats against other people. Then what the Buffalo Police Department is doing is they're finding out who that person is, and then they're proactively going and finding that person, or going to their parents and saying, 'Hey, do not do know what your son is doing on social media here? He's flashing a gun, he's flashing a hand signal. He's threatening another person.' We're trying to intervene before the shots get fired.
"Another example is the high risk team that we have here in this office. About six months ago, we started a high risk team here in our DA's office, and we're partnering with the Buffalo Public Schools, Buffalo Police Department, various non-violence groups in the City of Buffalo. What we're doing is we're identifying young kids under 20 who have been shot. They haven't been charged with a crime, they haven't, to our knowledge, committed a crime. They've just been shot. So we're reaching out to them, and asking, 'Why did you get shot? It wasn't just random. You were hanging around the wrong people, you were at the wrong place, you're hanging around the wrong crowd, and we want to get you out of this crowd to get you on track.' If the kid volunteers to go to the program, it's a year long program. We start out with about 10 kids initially, and we're going to do these 10 kids for a year and see how it goes and then get more.
"This is the kind of stuff we need funding for, and again, the Biden administration's is providing funding for justice kind of stuff, which I applaud."
Meanwhile, Flynn and his office also started gun violence impact panels about a year-and-a-half ago, where they go into schools and a panel of people including law enforcement, members of non-violence groups in the community, former gang members and parents who've lost a loved one to a gun-related shooting talk about the impact of gun violence in the community.
"These are the kind of people we put on these panels, and we go in to high schools, go into middle schools - mainly in the City of Buffalo, but we've done a few in the suburbs as well - and the panel talks to the students about the dangers of gun violence," Flynn said. "We just went to the Bennett campus. As you know, about a month ago, a kid brought a gun in the school at Bennett. About a week ago, they had a shutdown because of a threat at Bennett. So Bennett has kind of been on my mind for the past month now. So we just had a victim impact panel there this week and went very well. We're going to continue doing that throughout the city."
You can listen to our entire conversation with Flynn below:
