Sheriff’s Essays

Police are not the solution to violent crime. Police are a large part of a solution to violent crime. The rhetoric from all sides, this “us versus them” nonsense fixes nothing. It leads to dysfunction, hatred, and both sides digging into their foxholes, arguing about their sole points of view ‘till...

As a law enforcement officer with 35 years of experience and a life-long member of our community, I share some of the sincere concerns some of you, our citizens, have in calling for revisions to the recently enacted New York State Criminal Justice Reform laws. Our community is hurting and is in pai...

The only accountability for stealing in New York these days is your bank account. When someone steals a $100 item from a big box store, New York State immediately loses $4 in sales tax. Monroe County loses an additional $4. Before the January 2020 enactment of bail reform, a very conservative esti...

"My husband looked at him, turned and said 'I have a wife, I have children,' but he continued to shoot." Diane Piagentini Redemption of a Cop Killer? New York CityPolice Officers Joseph Piagentini and Waverly Jones     were ambushed in a premeditated attack in Harlem when responding to a fabri...

Let me paint a portrait of a crime victim. She’s seated alone and isolated in an interior office of a large academic building. A young man walks in, expresses bizarre thoughts, approaches suddenly, and threatens her with a knife. From her chair, our victim leaps up, grabs his wrist, and shoves him...

While I was not a terrible kid growing up in the Otis Street neighborhood of the City of Rochester, I clearly understood what “downtown” meant when a cop said it. It meant booking in the Monroe County Jail. My teenage friends and I occasionally encountered Officer Jesse Eason, our neighborhood RPD...