By Joyce Kryszak
Buffalo, NY – Police Commissioner Rocco Diina is defending his department's handling of homicide investigations in the city. The commissioner came under fire this week when citizens called for his ouster at a rally downtown to stop violence on the East Side.
Diina discounted the throng of angry government, church and community leaders who gathered downtown this week. Nearly five hundred homicides remain unsolved in the city -- most of the killings took place in the poor East Side neighborhood. Protesters chanted for peace, for a homicide squad, and for Diina to step down. Diina called them "a small group of malcontents." He says the Major Crimes unit is getting the job done.
"Homicides are their top priority," Diina said. "Nobody is getting called off a homicide to work a robbery case. We have the resources in how to deploy them. We will make those decisions."
Diina says they are studying the suggestion that it may be time to reestablish a homicide squad. Meanwhile, residents say cases are going unsolved and killing is being accepted as routine on the East Side. Diina says there are few innocent victims here.
"Most of the victims, unfortunately, are individuals who enhance their vulnerability by the style of life they choose," Diina said. "If you're dealing drugs and you're running around with guns, you've done something to enhance your vulnerability. These are not innocent people getting shot."
But surviving family members at the rally argued that they are victims first of the crime, then of the system that is slow to act.
Diina says bad parenting is also largely to blame. And he says some of them are now irresponsibly calling for change before the problem has been properly studied.