One month remains until the Buffalo mayoral primary, and State Senator and mayoral candidate Sean Ryan is using his public safety platform to emphasize a need for collaboration between law enforcement and communities.
“Community initiative” is a thread Ryan uses repeatedly when discussing his public safety plan. That means analyzing where to invest resources and opportunities, Ryan said.
“The city of Buffalo needs to work harder to offer more supportive services and education and job opportunities for young people,” he said. "I'll also focus on community violence intervention and outreach, establishing the relationships with at-risk youth and adults."
Ryan also believes police officers need to be allocated better, citing rampant overtime use.
“They drastically underestimate the cost of police overtime, but you're only going to get that under control with good management, management that tries to curb overtime,” he said.
Work being done on drug prevention and education demonstrates the power of working together between community advocates and school resource officers, said pastor James Giles, CEO of Back to Basics Outreach Ministries.
“Buffalo education is a big thing, big concern for us. We actually have a contract with Buffalo Public Schools, and they do have several programs in there," he said. "We work with (SROs) very closely, and so and they're knowledgeable about what's going on and they have been trained to do intervention when there (are) incidents of violence.”
Ryan would also increase transparency whenever there’s a homicide and make those press conferences available on social media, he said.
