For months, discussions around a proposed reorganization plan for the Rochester Police Department have fueled a tiff between the city, the department and its union.
What exactly that reorganization would look like had been unclear until the department introduced the plan and its specifics earlier this month.
“We don’t see it as a plan that makes any sense, quite frankly,” said Mike Mazzeo, president of the Rochester Police Locust Club.
Police officials have said the proposal would realign the department to better focus on key public safety initiatives, namely violence prevention and community outreach.
The plan, first outlined in May through a PowerPoint presentation to City Council members and city officials, calls for a shift from a five-section patrol model to a four-section one, a modest uptick in patrol numbers, and the creation of two new units of the department: a Community Relations Division and an Investigative Division.
Specifically, the plan eliminates the department’s Central Section, which covers most of downtown and stretches to Lyell Avenue in the city’s northwest and Linden Avenue to the south. Under the plan, most of the area that was in the Central Section would be absorbed by the Genesee Section, which would extend from Alexander Street on the east side to the city’s western edge.
According to the proposal, the department plans to increase the number of on-duty officers from 124 to 139 per shift.
The department began operating under a five-section model in 2015, the result of a police reorganization plan developed by former Chief Michael Ciminelli and former Mayor Lovely Warren. Prior to that, the department had operated under a two-section model.
The proposal describes the reorganization as a “pivot to address the concerns of violence while creating a framework for future growth and sustainability.”
Rochester has experienced a notable uptick of violent crime in recent years. For example, 172 people were shot in 2019, 22 of them fatally, while in 2021, 419 people were shot, 57 of them fatally. That year marked the highest number of homicides in the city’s history.
So far this year, 232 people have been shot, 34 of whom were killed.
Mazzeo doesn’t see the plan as doing anything like that and he argues that it may worsen current staffing issues.
“You’re breaking up downtown, which is a very unique area, so now you’ve got three different commands, captains, that have a part of that,” Mazzeo said. “How do they coordinate?”
While Mazzeo said the 2015 reorganization was better thought out and based on more conversation than the current proposal, he was also critical of that transition at the time. He lamented to the Democrat and Chronicle at the time that the city was shifting to the new model without first establishing new police stations in each section.
The proposal also creates or shuffles around a few divisions and units. For example, the new Investigations Division would house the existing homicide and special victims units, as well as the newly created criminal investigations units. The new Community Affairs Division would house the mounted patrols, K-9 unit, and a new Neighborhood Services Section.
In August, the Rochester Police Locust Club objected to the reorganization proposal after Chief David Smith presented the plan at a community meeting. Mazzeo called it a strain on an already overburdened department that would lead to a wave of resignations and retirements.
“This is a plan for the sake of having a plan,” Mazzeo said.
The department said it intends to ease officers’ transitions into new assignments and sections and to work with the union to “minimize impact” of the reorganization. The plan is expected to go into effect this fall.
