The four remaining Syracuse mayoral candidates on Tuesday discussed how their respective administrations might fund initiatives touted on the campaign trail as ways to decrease Syracuse’s high rate of violent crime and improve police-community relations.

At Great Grace Church, off Oswego Street on the city’s Near Westside, about 60 city residents filled church pews to listen to the candidates at one of Syracuse’s few remaining mayoral forums before the Nov. 7 general election.

In 2016, Syracuse saw its highest number of homicides on record after 31 people were killed, and vacancies at the Syracuse Police Department has been a hot-button issue throughout the mayoral race.

To address crime, Democratic candidate Juanita Perez Williams said as mayor, she would take a close look at Rochester’s gun court, a program that assigns gun-related criminal prosecution to one judge. By 2020, officials in that western New York city expect gun violence to decrease by about 50 percent, in part due to the gun court program, Perez Williams said.

Improving the city’s community policing presence would also be a priority of her administration, she said.

“We have to have a police force that treats people with respect … and treats all of our neighborhoods the same,” Perez Williams said.

When asked how she would fund her ideas, Perez Williams said she would “re-nurture” Syracuse’s relationship with New York state Gov. Andrew Cuomo and undertake a “deployment assessment” for the SPD and fire department.

A deployment assessment could determine whether the city’s assets and officers are being used in an efficient way, she said.

Ben Walsh, an independent candidate running on the Independence and Reform Party lines, said he would hire more officers to cut down on overtime costs, consider putting up more surveillance cameras in neighborhoods that both want and need them and buy more body cameras for the SPD.

By working with county, state and federal officials, Walsh said he would look to secure grants or additional funding sources to help implement some of his ideas.

“The way we put ourselves in a position to secure those resources is by developing and nurturing those relationships,” Walsh said.

Howie Hawkins, who’s running on the Green Party line, said he would hire more “youth outreach workers.”

The Green Party candidate cited an Associated Press report published in September that found, in Syracuse, teenagers are being killed or wounded by gunfire at rates higher than most other cities in the United States. From 2014 to this past June, 48 children ages 12 to 17 were killed or wounded by gunshots in the city, an AP analysis found.

“That’s why I say we need youth outreach workers,” he said. “We need to connect these youth, who are unattached to jobs and employment, and reintegrate them into society and provide them what they need, whether it be educational opportunity, employment training, a job.”

Laura Lavine, meanwhile, the Republican candidate, said the city needs to hire more police officers but officers “who do not militarize our streets.” The Republican candidate referenced the Camden, New Jersey police department as a potential model for Syracuse.

Officers in Camden go on more walking beats now, according to The New York Times, and the city’s homicide rate has dramatically decreased.

Community policing is key, she said, to build trust in neighborhoods. Lavine said the money spent on police overtime needs to be “repurposed” to hire more officers and a complete assessment of the SPD needs to take place to “make sure that every single job that can be done as a civilian can be done as a civilian.”

“Shots are fired almost every day,” Lavine said. “Do you realize how insane this has become? And how desensitized we have become to this?”

Published on October 24, 2017 at 11:55 pm

Contact Sam: sfogozal@syr.edu | @SamOgozalek