Mayor Bob Duffy is asking City Council to approve $1.6 million more for the city's Zero Tolerance program to reduce violent crime. Council will probably approve the money at its December 18 meeting, but Duffy's request was met with exasperation by some City Council members at a meeting last week.

Several Council members said they were concerned both about the amount of money and how it is being used.

"We're burning through money," said South District Council member Adam McFadden. "They didn't think they would run through that money until the end of January. This is more like Christmas bonuses to cops than making the streets safer."

City Council approved $2.5 million for Zero Tolerance less than a month ago. McFadden said he is concerned that too much money is being directed to law enforcement and no money is going into the community to address the root causes of violent crime.

"We can't spend our way out of the problem, and they're attempting to do that," he said.

The expense for Zero Tolerance is causing some City Council members and community leaders to question the strategy. Police officers are using every opportunity, including minor traffic violations - a broken vehicle signal, obstruction of a rear-view mirror, a missing registration sticker - to question drivers. Then the police can search for illegal guns, narcotics, prior arrests, and outstanding warrants.

Councilmember Bill Prichard questioned the value of paying a police officer overtime to write a $40 ticket, for example. Police are supposed to be going after the guy "that is one trigger away from blowing someone's brains out," he said.

Mayor Duffy and Police Chief David Moore say Zero Tolerance works, and they are deflecting criticism.

"The minor infractions are the gateway to catching those people committing the larger crimes," says Gary Walker, a Duffy spokesperson. "We cannot allow people to carry illegal guns and get into a gunfight at a bus stop. The mayor has said he is very respectful of people's civil rights. But the people who live here, work here, and pay taxes have rights, too. They have the right to be able to go outside their home and walk to the store without getting shot."

Walker, who was pulled over by police on the Inner Loop, says the mayor sees the city's violent crime problem as "a crisis" and he's not changing course.

"We welcome the scrutiny from City Council," Walker says. "But the fact is we were in a time when illegal guns were being used without fear. That is changing. We're going to turn the street culture of violence around in this city."

Aggressive policing has always had its critics. City Council has not received any written complaints related to Zero Tolerance, but some anecdotal stories from citizens are beginning to surface. Local attorney and city School Board Commissioner Van Henri White says his office has received numerous calls from concerned citizens and he has fielded phone calls from listeners to his WDKX radio program.

"When they talk about Zero Tolerance, what do they have Zero Tolerance for?" says White. "Zero Tolerance is supposed to be a tactical element of a bigger plan. You apply it for a strategic reason. But if you're applying it for everything, it's no longer a tactic, and no one knows what the real plan is."

Zero Tolerance policing tends to hurt the same people city officials say it is supposed to protect, says White: minorities and the working poor.

"People call in to DKX, and they are good law-abiding citizens who are getting stopped for things like a broken tail light," says White. "They don't have any guns and there is no roach clip in the ash tray, but now they get a ticket. And that takes three to four hours off work to go and fix the tail light and handle the ticket. So now you have lots of people in a town where jobs are scarce dealing with this kind of thing. The point is you can't arrest your way out of the problem."

Arrests or interdiction, White says, has to be combined with prevention and intervention techniques as part of a wider plan to be successful.

"It's the need for more money that is pointing out that there really is no plan to this," White says.

The Genesee Valley Chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union has also been receiving complaints about Zero Tolerance, says Gary Pudup, the organization's director. One young man told Pudup he had been stopped five times because he had no front license plate on the car he was using to deliver pizzas. He told Pudup he was eventually arrested.

"The question we should be asking is, do we want the police stopping everybody?" says Pudup. "Should we be arresting a pizza delivery guy for disorderly conduct because he didn't have a front license plate? Even the owner of the pizza parlor came out and told police, ‘This guy is okay; he works for me.' Are they starting to play a little fast and loose here?"

But Walker says no.

"We've spent a lot of money, and we've made a lot of arrests," he says. "What works is consistency over the duration."

Zero Tolerance, Walker says, will not continue indefinitely, and he insists the mayor does have a longer-term plan.

"It is the appropriate response right now," says Walker. "This is just the beginning of a more in-depth plan. We do plan to go into the schools and into the community with more outreach and education. But right now, we have to first stop the shootings."

Even though some Council members are concerned about Zero Tolerance, City Council President Lois Giess says she believes Council will approve the funding request.