Violence has struck again in Rochester. And again. And again.

This year's murder rate isn't as high as last year's, and violent crime is down. But the statistics seem meaningless when we hear reports of yet another shooting and read yet another account of a funeral for a black teenager who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In an eloquent statement after some of the most recent killings, Mayor Bob Duffy poured out his frustration. The community, he said, must demand "individual and family accountability" to end the city's culture of violence.

Duffy was particularly passionate in insisting that Rochester police can't stop the violence. "Rochester has almost 150,000 fewer people than at our population peak," he said, "yet we have more police officers than at any time in our history. We cannot put a police officer on every street corner, in every establishment, and in every yard to end violence...."

And he lashed out at "a decrepit street culture that does not value human life or the rights of other citizens."

Duffy is right, of course. These murders - and the shootings and stabbings that could have led to death but didn't - are the actions of people who don't give a whit about the lives of their victims. And this year's violence is not an aberration. It has become a fact of life in certain Rochester neighborhoods.

Rochester police can try to tamp down the violence, with more cops in the target neighborhoods, more searches, more cameras. But they can't prevent it. Prevention will take a massive, community-wide effort.

We'd better aim that effort at the right target, though. And I found part of the mayor's recent statement troubling:

"This is not about poverty," he said. "Poverty does not cause a person to hold a gun to another's head and execute them in cold blood. Poverty does not cause a person to fire a gun into a crowd of young people with no thought to what could happen to an innocent bystander."

Well, of course. People should take responsibility for their actions. Parents should raise their children right. Mayoral sermons won't make that happen, though.

Duffy also insisted that "the community, churches, and families" should support the police and figure out what they can do themselves to reduce violence. But what should they do? There are the easy answers: hold candlelight marches, expand recreational programs for young people, get suburbanites to mentor or tutor students or build Habitat houses.

But that won't address the root of the problem. It will only make us feel like we're doing something.

What will address the root of the problem? Nothing simple, obviously. But it has to start with recognizing the connection between poverty and crime. The mayor's wrong. This is about poverty and its concentration in specific areas of the city.

If there is no connection between poverty and our violence, why is the violence concentrated in the poorest neighborhoods in the region? Why isn't it happening in Pittsford?

If it's not poverty, what is it? Race? I know the mayor doesn't believe that, but many people do, so his statement is a concern.

The mayor's expression of frustration and his call for accountability were important. He has laid out, as few people have, the impossibility of relying on law enforcement to stop violence. He should follow up, though, with an effort to pull together the community - citizens' groups; the educational, business, and medical communities; county government; social service agencies - to come up with a plan that will address the roots and the culture of violence in Rochester.

I had hoped, as I've said before, that the Children's Zone would be that kind of effort. It has floundered. But somebody - the mayor, maybe - has to devise an alternative. Cops can't stop the violence. Neither can sermons about accountability.