BATAVIA, N.Y. — Over the past few months, a city of just over 15,000 people has seen three incidents where shots were fired, with one person non-fatally struck by a bullet.
This problem is now something Batavia police chief Shawn Heubusch feels needs tackled immediately.
“It is not the norm to have three of these crimes occur in such a short period of time.”
Locals say that Batavia is not a city that normally sees much, if any, violent crime.
“The population of this county is really small, and all the towns out here are small villages,” said 60-year resident Craig Jackson.
As a result, even the slightest uptick puts city administrators on edge.
“It’s troublesome, it’s worrisome, and it’s not something we want to brush off,” said Rachael Tabelski, city manager.
Police chief Heubusch co-wrote a letter to the community Monday explaining his department plans to partner with the state police, sherriff’s office and the governor's office to allocate resources to the city in response to these incidents.
“It boils down to personnel, those kind of resources, human resources if you will. That’s what solves these crimes, that what prevents these crimes from happening as well."
Jeremey Sitarek just moved to Batavia from the Buffalo Niagara area and didn’t expect the big city crime to come too. His friends from home have even mentioned it to him in texts.
“I had a friend text me saying ‘I was expecting [these incidents] when you were living at home, not [in Batavia].’”
However, other long-term residents I spoke too aren’t very shaken by the news.
“Batavia has had a couple [of incidents], but compared to other cities, it’s not something where you have to be scared to walk outdoors,” Jackson said.
Chief Heubusch shared that a special unit from his police force will be out patrolling the areas they’ve noticed these gun issues in, but he didn’t get into many specifics about what to expect from these officers.
“It won’t always be an increased presence just by a police car driving up and down the street, it’ll be a bit different than that.”
The chief says they have been in talks about those additional resources but nothing has been agreed on yet.
