Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - A little more than 48 hours after a violent Fourth of July Weekend across different parts of the City of Buffalo, Mayor Sean Ryan addressed the violence and distressing times for many residents and police officers.
Like police commissioner Erika Shields said Monday afternoon, the city knew several illegal street takeovers that took place last year during Fourth of July Weekend, and Ryan wanted to get ahead of it this year.
"It took Buffalo about three days to get control of the streets [last year]. I came in this year trying to concentrate on the Fourth of July," said Ryan during a gaggle with the media on Tuesday. "We have an intelligence unit, we had all these reports of what streets were going to be taken over. We had police officers out there, we had more police officers on duty than the previous Fourth of July. We put out barriers on Olympic Avenue to stop drag racing that was going to start. There was an illegal basketball tournament that was in Rochester and Niagara Falls, both were these meetups that led to shootings and violence. They were going to come to Delaware Park, so we took down the hoops in Delaware Park for about 18 hours. We put that on Facebook and showed the organizers, 'You're not going to come here to do this mayhem.' So we had things closed down all over the City of Buffalo, and then it popped up just like last year on a multi-block [basis] on Delavan Avenue."
Ryan also alluded to the fact this was not just violence involving the youth and the residents of Buffalo.
"This was youth from all over Erie County. There were Ubers dropping people off, there were people from the suburbs dropping off children, young adults. And also don't think of this as a young person's event. The people who were involved in these shootings range from 13-to-51-years-old," Ryan noted. "If you want to hold a street festival in the City of Buffalo, you get a permit. You work with the police department, you put up an insurance form. But this is the same organizer who organized it last year."
Ryan feels this event over the weekend was an organized, chaotic event, with the organizer wanting to organize chaos and doing just that.
"My heart goes out to the people who live on those blocks," Ryan added. "We canvassed those blocks before, we let them know there might be potential trouble, but that meant families who had planned barbecues could not do the barbecue because people were illegally parking all over the street. Block clubs who had planted intersections and corners with wonderful, beautiful flowers had those trampled and intentionally vandalized. So it was a bad day for the people who live in the City of Buffalo, but this type of lawlessness will not be permitted. We're not doing it."
Like what police commissioner Shields said Monday, Ryan and his office are looking into ways to issue a cease and desist order against the organizer, while also looking into pinning some of the overtime costs or other issues from the weekend on the organizer.
"This is a step," Ryan said. "Last year, they tried to have quiet conversations to invite this person to join the mainstream community and to hold these events as a private promoter. He obviously said no to it, so this year, we are going to look at our legal means to bring a civil action against him to bill him for all the expenses related to the event that he put on in the City of Buffalo illegally.
"This individual saw the mayhem that was created last year. Different members of the community sought him out, we had him meeting with business development people, we had a meeting with legitimate concert promoters and said, 'Here is a way to take your following and to do something productive.' He chose to do something unproductive, something chaotic, something harmful to the neighborhoods, and something that led to a lot of violence. So anything we can pin on this guy, we are going to pin on him."
Commissioner Shields also pointed to some individuals from communities across Erie County like the Town of Lancaster being involved in the weekend's violence. Ryan says the city was able to confirm that by running license plates on vehicles, while also noticing people with bumper stickers on their cars.
"It's not just a Buffalo event. People are coming from outside, so we need to talk to parents about where their kids are going with their cars on the Fourth of July, to get the message out that these are impermissible gatherings, they're not sanctioned at all by the government," Ryan noted. "They're bad for the neighborhoods they're being hosted in, and remember, no neighbor who lived off of Delavan said, 'Yeah, let's do this party.' This was inflicted upon that neighborhood.
Ryan also pointed to how Buffalo police officers met with bottles, insults and other antics from the crowd when they arrived in an effort to disperse the gathering.
"It quickly became a situation that the only way you can clear that crowd really quickly is to resort to a high degree of force." Ryan acknowledged. "We responded with tear gas, we responded with pepper balls fired, and in about a period of 90 minutes, we were able to clear that crowd away."
One possible solution that is being looked at by other cities across the state is enforcing a curfew to try and dissuade any further violence from taking place on weekends like the Fourth of July. Those are discussions that Ryan plans on having with mayors in cities like Rochester, Syracuse and Albany.
"I keep in close contact with the other Upstate mayors, and every upstate mayor had a similar problem: Organizers organizing illegal events, and their police force playing cat and mouse to try to stop the events from coming off," Ryan said. "They're all facing almost the exact same problem that we are, and you see this same type of events happen in Boston and Philadelphia. So it seems to be a trend amongst internet influencers to try to draw people to public events. It might have started innocently, 'Let's do a pop-up crowd in Grand Central, or let's do a pop-up crowd at this corner.' But what that's turned into is absolutely unlawful gatherings."
Ryan says he's already looking ahead to next year, knowing the city has to have a similar law enforcement approach, but spread the outreach further.
"This year, we mostly talked to the people in the affected neighborhoods to say, 'Look out, this could be coming.' But next year, starting earlier in May, we're going to start doing outreach to different parts of the community to really message, 'Don't come to these illegal gatherings on July 4 if your kid asked to borrow the car because they say they want to go into the city to see the biggest duck, they might not be going to see the biggest duck or the fireworks at [Sahlen] Field. They might be going into an illegal party.' So we're going to try to get the word out there much earlier to responsible adults to say, 'We don't want you coming in for these events, these are not sanctioned events.' And these have a real negative impact on the people who live in these neighborhoods," Ryan said.
