Brian Sharp

@SharpRoc

Claiming that Rochester was "pilot-less" — lacking in leadership, vision and accountability — former police chief and current Monroe County Legislator James Sheppard launched his mayor bid Saturday, and joined supporters in a blistering criticism of the current administration.

The campaign for Mayor Lovely Warren responded in kind, saying that Sheppard's candidacy "is offensive to the people of Rochester."

Not to be left out, a spokesman for potential candidate Rachel Barnhart issued a statement raising what he called serious questions regarding "discriminatory policing policies" during Sheppard's tenure as chief. Barnhart, a former WROC-TV (Channel 8) reporter and anchor, ran for state Assembly in November.

Rochester's nascent 2017 mayoral race only has one officially declared candidate in Sheppard, but the rhetoric Saturday already was in midseason form.

Sheppard, who like Warren and Barnhart is a Democrat, served as the city's police chief from late 2010 through 2013, capping a 33-year career in police work. He inherited a controversial Zero Tolerance initiative and rebranded it as Cool Down. While his tenure saw a precipitous decline in homicides, there were controversial arrests, officer-involved shootings and, ultimately, a fallout with Warren and City Councilman Adam McFadden, who heads the Council's Public Safety, Youth and Recreation Committee.

Sheppard was elected to the county legislature in 2015. And, on Saturday, he kicked off his mayoral campaign at the Workers United Union Hall on East Avenue.

"We have a crisis in the city of Rochester, in that we are pilot-less," Sheppard told the crowd, decrying what he said was "a leadership issue" and a loss of faith in City Hall by citizens, community groups and others. "I have been watching with growing alarm as our city flounders and loses traction."

Sheppard said the Warren administration was absent in advocating for funding for children in the budget of Monroe County, which deals with human services and day care subsidies. In the coming weeks and months, he promised to detail plans to address education, economic development, jobs, poverty and public safety, with a promise to focus on transparency and inclusion.

He spoke often about his police experience. Public safety is certain to be a central issue in the campaign.

Sheppard said the Warren administration hides from bad news, was late in launching a 90-day police-community engagement outreach in year three of Warren's term, saying it should have started on Day One, and said he was "embarrassed" by the city's handling of a Black Lives Matter protest last July that saw more than 70 people arrested.

Warren has acknowledged the matter could have been handled better.

Sheppard's tenure had its own missteps, including an arrest of activist Emily Good that brought national attention, and the admitted "targeted" ticketing of her supporters' vehicles.

In the overflow audience was former Mayor Thomas Richards — who called his former chief "a real good man" and the "better candidate" — other past members of the Rober Duffy and Richards administrations, City Council member Molly Clifford, union members, pastors and community members.

Supporter Aaron Hilger, president of the Builders Exchange of Rochester, was the most strident Warren critic in a lengthy parade of speakers leading up to Sheppard's announcement. Hilger ripped Warren as lacking in the leadership skills and temperament necessary to be an effective mayor. He attributed Warren's successes to delivering on initiatives of prior administrations, adding: "We are not growing in Rochester," but rather in the suburbs and elsewhere, "and we have no plan for the future."

Warren's camp meanwhile, proclaimed "an unprecedented period of growth and progress with construction and investment" in downtown and in neighborhoods, highlighted improved bond ratings and added state and federal investment, a Police Department reorganization and introduction of officer body-worn cameras.

It also noted a 25-year low in the overall crime rate, but not a spike in homicides, and a rise in aggravated assaults and shootings.

►Murders up 19 percent in city in 2016

►Rochester mayoral race heating up

In a statement, Warren campaign spokesman Gary Rogers said Sheppard's police chief tenure was marked by "heavy-handed police tactics," and charged that, while Sheppard and supporters spoke of a commitment to Rochester, he moved his family back from Wayne County only in 2007, because of a residency requirement to advance in the Police Department. The statement revisited allegations of past property violations that were raised late in the legislative primary and noted that Sheppard was among those granted improper fee waivers by the Monroe County Clerk's Office, which Sheppard paid back.

McFadden, an ardent Warren supporter, referred to "James 'stop and frisk' Sheppard" in a Facebook post on Friday, and criticized the unions supporting him for not being representative of their members.

Sheppard's campaign shot back that the Barnhart and Warren campaigns' "allegations were filled with lies, unfounded assertions and unsubstantiated exaggeration," and sought to put the focus on crime, unemployment, poverty and whether Rochester was moving in the right direction.

The police practices in question involved stopping a large number of people for minor infractions with the hope of intercepting guns and other contraband. Those efforts were notably stepped up by Sheppard's predecessor as police chief, David Moore, under Zero Tolerance.

►Sheppard bids farewell as chief

That reflected a trend nationwide as law enforcement sought to emulate both the aggressive and data-driven tactics that New York City employed while seeing homicides plummet from more than 2,000 in the early 1990s to 335 this past year, said John Klofas, criminal justice professor and founder and director of the Center for Public Safety Initiatives at Rochester Institute of Technology.

Klofas works closely with RPD on various issues, most recently seeking to address dispute-related violence, having found that ongoing disputes or conflicts account for 60 percent of the city's shootings. The controversial "stop and frisk" peaked in New York City around 2011, and nationally fell after a court decision in 2013 that found NYPD carried out the practice in a manner that was unconstitutional.

Asked about the tactics Saturday, Sheppard said, "Everything in my police career was about saving lives." He talked about police struggles to combat crime and said how officers interact with people during a stop is more important in community relations and effectiveness than the reason for the stop. As for the job his successor, Chief Michael Ciminelli, is doing, Sheppard said: "He doesn't run the Police Department. The mayor runs the Police Department."

The national shift came rather quickly, Klofas said, and roughly coincides locally with the change in city administrations. The data focus went from saturation patrols of so-called "hot spots" to a more selective focus on "hot people," or known violent offenders, he said.

Still, the city's rate of homicides and violent crime has, by and large, remained elevated and steady. Tactics have not shifted significantly, Klofas said, leaving the next mayor with a familiar set of problems: violence, police-community relations and quality of life challenges.

"We've had a persistent problem in this area for a long period of time," Klofas said, "and not been able to respond effectively to move the needle."

BDSHARP@Gannett.com