This is the kind of thing that drives me crazy.
Tony Micciche, a Republican in the Monroe County Legislature, has submitted legislation at the county level calling on City Council to pass a proposal to create drug-free zones in the City of Rochester.
The city legislation has been proposed by Council member Adam McFadden, chair of council’s Public Safety Committee. If approved, it would prohibit loitering in designated areas in the city for the purpose of selling drugs. The proposal is intended to combat the persistent problem of open-air drug markets in the city.
It’s not clear when or if McFadden’s legislation will make it to the full Council for a vote; questions have been raised about the measure’s constitutionality. But there’s a lot of upheaval happening in city government right now due to the impending arrival of a new administration, so it’s tough to predict what will happen with anything.
Micciche’s legislation is a memorializing referral, which is essentially the way one government tells another, “We think you should do this.” It doesn’t, by itself, change anything.
It’s exciting to see that Monroe County government remembers that the City of Rochester exists, and part of Micciche’s district is in the city. But we’re talking about a government that systematically and gleefully suppresses the opposing party at every turn. Democratic proposals rarely make it out of committee and, what’s worse, Democrats are routinely deprived of even the most basic information they need to be effective representatives. (Many of the people those Democrats represent live in the city.)
Meanwhile, the Republican-led county continues to squeeze the city whenever and wherever it can: cutting day care subsidies for the low income, eliminating funding for the sheriff’s road patrol, implementing MCC chargebacks as well as new charges in the county’s 2014 budget, and the rest of it.
The day care subsidy cut is just the sort of shortsighted, budget-by-crisis thinking that contributes to problems like young people selling drugs on the street corner. Have we not yet learned that actions have consequences?
And now a Republican county legislator wants to tell the city what it should do to fight its drug problem? It’s maddening. No thanks.
This article appears in Dec 11-17, 2013.
Now things make sense. Passing drug free zones would mean more citizens would be arrested and this would help justify the increase of $1.5 million for the housing of prisoners in the jail. Too bad they are not interested in decreasing the number of people in jail as a way to cut costs as that would help everyone.
Of course it’s unconstitutional! And it wouldn’t work even if it were passed. These politicians just want to look like they’re doing something. I lived in the middle of this for 7 years and never called Adam Mcfadden to complain. I didn’t like much of it and I was mildly inconvenienced at times. Sometimes, I was downright furious, but I never thought I had the power to do anything about it or thought I could make a phone call to someone who did.
Since selling illegal drugs is, in fact, illegal, then isn’t the city already a drug-free zone?
Now is not the right time for city council to step in on this, it’s really up to Lovely Warren to name her Police Chief and for him or her to set a direction.
As I see it, the city will either make some pronounced effort to increase enforcement of the state’s existing anti-drug laws (I have suggested increased undercover narcotics investigation and SWAT-style drug house raids) as a “get-tough” policy, or it will continue to largely ignore the problem in the name of “improved community relations.”
Stop-and-frisk of street-corner loiterers is not going to be a solution. The serious hard drug sales are occurring from drug houses, not in open-air. Open-air sales are mostly marijuana. What’s required is actual undercover work by narcotics detectives, to include developing informants and executing controlled crack cocaine and heroin buys from drug houses. This is not regular patrol officers riding around and running their low-level harassment game by briefly shining their spotlights on corner crowds, then driving on.
It’s up to Warren to establish her credibility on this.