With another Buffalo businessman slain in an unsolved robbery on Wednesday morning and the Thursday announcement that the "bike path rapist" is indeed connected to the death of Joan Diver, the only thing that is clear about Western New York crime investigation is that it is in great need of reformation.
This is a wake up call for the community and the police.
Police investigators need to realize that violent crimes, like robbery-homicides in broad daylight and sexual assault like Linda Yalem, are not unique incidents. The reality of the matter is that crimes are not always isolated incidents, and in fact are more connected than we think. Crimes that happen close to home, as well as crime across town, should be a concern for everyone in Buffalo area. Just because it doesn't happen next door does not mean it cannot affect you. Violence throughout the community should be addressed as a whole and seen through a more encompassing scope, and only until then police will be able to have a chance to prevent serial offenders.
In recent years, popularized crime scene investigation technology has skyrocketed into near unbelievable science that can take almost nothing and turn it into a telling array of irrefutable evidence. But just because we have new methods to solve crimes does not mean that police investigators should completely abandon methods that they used for decades to get one step ahead of the criminals at large. Good, old-fashioned statistics and patterns need to be followed more closely. Although it may be unfair to say this in hindsight of the Joan Diver connection, it is common sense to watch the emergence of trends. Science has the potential to solve, but investigating patterns and putting things together has the potential to be preemptive.
It is unacceptable to just cast the issues aside as random acts of violence. Not everything has to be connected, but facts can only be discounted as coincidences a few times before we should start asking questions and connecting the dots. Right now investigators of the Joan Diver murder are baffled at the 12-year gap between this incident and the last known attack attributed to the bike path rapist. Local analysts, as well as FBI investigators, are speculating that the culprit may have left the area for that period of time, but is now back; others feel that perhaps other local incidents were overlooked and not connected to the serial rapist.
Regardless of who is right or wrong, the lack of investigation and resources has let a criminal that was at large to strike again. We cannot say that there are a lack of reports and an endless paper trail of investigative notes and possible crime connections, but such a paper trail alone is useless when just occupying a few crowded storage rooms. Without substantial investigative teams diligently and constantly sieving through the piles of seemingly trivial reports, nothing will be uncovered and nothing will be prevented or fixed.
At points, crime can be seen as the stone that disturbed the calm lake; a ripple effect in which one act of violence is followed by another and then another, and although this might sound fatalist, it is the reality we live in. But like the ripples in the lake, the wave can be observed and traced back to the epicenter, exposing the root of its cause.
Undiscovered crime connections are out there, and with more resources for investigation, a great deal of life-preserving advantages could be brought to light.
