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Melee reported at Lewis and State, combatants wielding baseball bats

By Billie Owens

About 15 to 20 people are reportedly fighting, armed with baseball bats, at Lewis Place and State Street. City police are responding.

UPDATE 8:54 p.m.: Howard at the scene reports that there are six cop cars at the scene, including units from the Sheriff's Department. In addition, he said dozens of people "are milling about," some of whom are being interviewed by law enforcement. One witness told Howard that no baseball bats were involved.

Brian Graz

I said it at least 15 years ago, that if local law enforcement, and government didn't squelch the influx of outside riff-raff coming to Batavia, and get a handle on the then growing immigration of larger "inner-city" entitlement/welfare surfers who found their payday much easier to come by in Genesee County, it would eventually be out of control. As a lifelong resident of this community, what I see in Batavia today versus my younger years, and even more recently [just 15 years ago], the decline and decadence of the city is out of control.

Jul 31, 2014, 12:14am Permalink
Don Patterson

Brian Graz is absolutely right. I've seen things in Batavia over the past couple of years that I'd never imagined could go on in our tiny city. If the city needs a place to deploy their new "Neighbor Improvement Teams", or whatever they are called, the festering little sore that is the State St / Lewis Pl neighborhood would be a good place to start. The activities in this area seem to be bleeding over to some of the surrounding streets as well and eventually will start to have an impact on everybody's property values.

Jul 31, 2014, 9:58am Permalink
Mark Potwora

Its happening one block from city hall and the police dept..Where is councilman Canale? .He represents that area?..What is his view on how to deal with this problem..He has no problem with funding for flowers on Main St.He should put more attention to this area..

Jul 31, 2014, 11:39am Permalink
Thomas Mooney

Once again , those are all apartments and the landlords are all right with renting to them even though they have been targeted as nuisance citizens with extensive 911 calls to same area . At what point do we enforce the nuisance property law or the law that states that harboring known criminals .

Pointless to keep trying to reform these individuals or lets make it clear "Saddlers" of our town . Make the landlords responsible for any tenant that is labeled nuisance to society and leave it up to the landlord to evict or get fined . Then and only then will they move to a town that tolerates this behavior as this city has been for to long

Jul 31, 2014, 12:25pm Permalink
Lorie Cook

It is so disgusting and sad to see the children roaming around while their parents are sleeping from another night of drinking and drugging. There is also constant under-age drinking parties in that area. And lazy dudes who wanna get their drink on all day send their little girlfriends to momma and daddy for money to buy the scums their beer. It would be interesting to see how many underaged people purchase beers from Northside Deli. Cause rumor has it that's where they go.

The problem is not just there either. Walk around the parking lot of Save a Lot after foodstamp day and people will stalk you to try and sell you their foodstamp money for cash. And go right to the liquor store or to the hood to get their supplies. That baby got diapers last month.

Jul 31, 2014, 12:28pm Permalink
Debra Nanni

I agree Jeff. Alot of focus is on this area as far as the news, but there are a lot of other sore spots in the city unfortunately.

As far as outsiders coming in, it is true, we are attracting alot of troublemakers from the cities to our area. So are alot of other towns. But unfortunately alot of the names you are seeing are people who have grown up here and have been in trouble since they were young. We can't blame it all on people we don't know. Most of them are people that have been citizens of Batavia for a long time.

Jul 31, 2014, 3:04pm Permalink
jeff saquella

just tonight as I was driving down state street I witnessed 2 people having to just about carry a third person up front porch stairs and sit him down in a chair....looked like he was totally wasted

Jul 31, 2014, 11:07pm Permalink

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