ROCHESTER, N.Y. — ​Rudy Rivera can't get over what he saw last week, steps from the Father Tracy Advocacy Center on North Clinton Avenue in Rochester.

The deadly shooting of one man, just hours after a teen was gunned down just off La Avenida, and the way witnesses reacted moved Rivera to a call to action.

"If the police were killing us at the rate we're killing ourselves, I suspect this town would be on fire," Rivera said.

Rivera and eight others huddled beneath a pop-up tent in Friday's drizzle to ask why those who rallied for change after Daniel Prude's death last year had not responded in any way to a lethal start to 2021 in Rochester.

The city's seen nearly three times the number of homicides than recorded at this time last year.

Rivera still can't believe what he saw after one of two shootings that killed Markese Estimable last week. It happened along North Clinton Avenue's still buzzing open-air drug market.

"Twenty to 30 people there. This man, dying on the floor. People walk by him like he was a cigarette butt," said Rivera.

Ida Perez, of the Scrantom Street Block Club, said the drug dealing through the day on the section of North Clinton continues to menace those who live in the city's northeast.

"And these are the same people that have been at this corner, doing things that are not good to our neighborhood," said Perez.

"When we kill ourselves, I say to myself, `where are the protests lining this street?'" Rivera said.

According to advocates, violence along La Avenida is threatening the good momentum rising in the neighborhood. Soon, La Marketa of the International Plaza will open, just across the street from where Estimable was shot.

Yet there are some shattered by the shootings, especially the callous nature with which some witnesses to the attack responded.

City blue light camera video captured it. Rivera said what could be seen were phone cameras out, onlookers laughing and selfies taken with the victim.

Spectrum News viewed footage of the scene from the blue light camera. It showed one person appearing to speak on a phone as the person approached the victim.

Along with other local media, Spectrum News has not published the footage and will respect the victim's family request not to publish.

Still, the episode making people here feel unsafe.

"And when I'm coming home and I have to turn the corner of Scrantom, am I going to be one of those people in the crossfire," Perez said.

"Everybody knows what's happening here," Rivera said. "And yet, it persists."