It is becoming an exhausting conversation: the topic of whether or not the Buffalo Police Department can handle its job. Doubts about its leadership all the way down to its passenger seat officers are frequently discussed in and around the University Heights.
After the recent events on Lisbon Avenue, students are concerned about their safety on South Campus, not so much because of crime, but because they feel their police do not effectively protect and serve.
To briefly recap, a number of students were gang-assaulted at 211 Lisbon Ave. on a weekend night. It took the police 30 minutes to arrive at the scene, having changed the call's priority three times.
In a recent meeting at the Gloria J. Parks Community Center, police spokesmen took turns denying the late reaction time and assigned blame to the students for the incident. They held fast to their argument, which basically stated that the students should not have had a house party and that the crime was brought upon themselves as a result of their irresponsibility.
But it is a heinous crime in itself to blame a victim for a wrong done unto him just so that BPD can feel justified in their sluggish punctuality. That would be like blaming a rape victim for wearing a skirt, as one of the parents at the community meeting stated.
Granted, there may have been other things in the Heights that required attention over a priority-three call for a fistfight. Police claimed that there was a stabbing off of South Campus that had priority over the Lisbon complaint.
Being understaffed is an understatement. Also, Buffalo Police precincts are shoddily placed: jurisdictions in the Heights are split down the middle via Main Street. But redistricting seems like the obvious solution that the city has not yet addressed.
Despite their having felt attacked by bad press, the Buffalo Police should not have said that the students were "victimizing themselves," or made allusions to how house parties are the cause of the problem. That defies basic logic and takes a headlong plunge into the absurd. These fully-grown police spokesmen attempted to irresponsibly direct blame away from BPD.
But pointing fingers after the event is rather fruitless. It is easy to blame and to think about what could have happened if things had gone a little differently. The main thing is, even if the police had shown up within five minutes of the attack, most of the damage would have been done anyway. Several house parties occur each weekend in the heights; you also can't blame the students because trouble found their one party.
We think that the Buffalo Police made a huge error in the heat of the moment when they blamed innocent students for a crime that happened to them.
Though it may have been an unavoidable delay that stopped them from arriving at the scene directly, it would have been more responsible of the police to own up to their tardiness than to throw it back in the bruised faces of assault victims.
