There are two types of policing: aggressive policing to prevent and reduce crime or border guarding between the haves and the have-nots. The type a community chooses depends on its level of tolerance.

"How tolerant do we want to be?" asked MCC Criminology Professor Larry Feasel.

Feasel and Rochester Police Chief David Moore spoke about Zero Tolerance at a meeting last night at St. Mary's Church.

Zero Tolerance, the city's get tough on crime program, is working, Moore told a group of about 60 people.

He didn't have specifics and couldn't provide significant data to substantiate his statement beyond a City Hall survey that, he says, indicated that 80 percent of respondents favor the initiative and would like to see it expanded.

Zero Tolerance continues to irk some people in the community who take issue with the amount of police overtime and the increased potential for police profiling and abuse it presents.

In response to challengers, Moore asked how many people in the room had been touched personally by homicides in their immediate family.

Nearly all of the young people, many of them African-American teens living in the city's northeast and northwest neighborhoods, immediately raised their hands.

It was no pop quiz, but handgun violence is a scourge that the teens understood as matter of fact.

The sun comes up, people get shot. The sun goes down, people get shot.

Even though Rochester's murder rate has substantially declined since Zero Tolerance was introduced, outbursts like last weekend's indicate there is no reason for celebration.

Violence, even a little of it, profoundly shapes public opinion about the city.

Mayor Bob Duffy, who was also at the meeting, said that every time there is a homicide in the city "Someone makes a decision not to buy a house in the city, a CEO decides not to bring a business into the city, and someone already living here decides it's time to move away from the city."

The next question: how tolerant are we going to be of the city's economic condition and the low performance of our city schools? The two, according to Feasel, Moore, Duffy are at the heart of the city's gun violence.