Police departments in several cities across New York state may soon focus even more of their efforts on solving non-fatal shootings.

The idea is to prevent retaliatory shootings.

An initiative would be implemented with help of hundreds of thousands of dollars in state funds to take on a problem plaguing cities across the state.

“So oftentimes and at times, what occurs is, somebody gets shot and they survive that shooting, and certainly they want revenge against the person that shot them,” Rochester Police Department Lt. Greg Bello said. “So if we talk about what a retaliatory shooting is, that would be something as simple as somebody’s done something to me and I’m going to do something back to them. And too often, especially with some of the feuds and disputes that we have going on in our community, that involves firearms." 

Rochester is one of five cities slated to get the funding along with Buffalo, Schenectady, Troy and Utica.

It’s proposed that police and prosecutors would share $866,564 to implement evidence-based approaches to improve investigations and save lives.

The move is meant to support dedicated teams of police, prosecutors and crime analysts in their efforts to work together to solve non-fatal shooting cases from the point at which they are reported, similar to what’s seen in homicide investigations.

The collaboration would help investigators secure crime scenes and gather and preserve evidence immediately, increasing the odds of figuring out who’s responsible for non-fatal shootings.

"So we’re working towards, OK, once this shooting has happened, how do we respond as efficiently as possible to bring closure to as many of these non-fatal shooting cases as we can?" Bello said. 

He says additional funding would certainly help with that.

The grant funding is set to run through June 30 and would cover overtime costs and equipment for both the police departments and the district attorney’s offices in the five cities.