When City Hall launched Zero Tolerance back in the fall, I was skeptical. But we've had 17 murders this year, compared to 27 for the same period last year.

It's hard to prove that the tough policing is responsible, says RIT criminal-justice professor John Klofas, who works with city officials on crime and violence issues. But, he adds, "by most measures, you'd say there's a relationship between what the cops have been doing and the decline." Both began in October.

Like me, Klofas has been worried about the impact Zero Tolerance could have on civil liberties. But he has supported the policing effort from the beginning. Faced with a horrific level of street violence, Rochester has to weigh the protection of civil liberties against the protection of human life.

And so cops are quizzing people standing on street corners. They're stopping and searching cars and drivers involved in minor traffic violations. In some neighborhoods, cameras keep an eye on the streets and sidewalks. We have a teen curfew. And high police costs.

We're told that Zero Tolerance is colorblind. But this is a program designed to put the cops in the hot spots: the high-crime neighborhoods of Rochester. And the majority of the people who live in those neighborhoods are African American and Hispanic.

Maybe, as Klofas says, we have to be willing to tolerate all that. In fact, many of the people who live in those neighborhoods are embracing the effort. It's civil libertarians like me, living safely outside of the hot spots, who are objecting, Klofas says.

Zero Tolerance seems to be doing what Klofas predicted, several months ago, that it might do: convincing the mostly young thugs involved in violence that there's a good chance they'll be stopped and searched, and that if they have a gun on them illegally, they'll be sent to prison.

Klofas is a reluctant supporter of Zero Tolerance, though, not a happy one. It's possible that as we reduce the murder rate, "we increase the isolation and separation of people from the mainstream," he says.

"This is ‘policing of another caste, of a different class,'" he warns. "What is the long-term impact of treating people as if they have no worth, no value, no rights?"

We're now facing "a dreadful calculus," says Klofas: "How oppressive do we want to be to reduce murders?"

And we shouldn't kid ourselves: we may have contained the violence, but we haven't dealt with its roots. We haven't, as Klofas puts it, done anything about the underlying arguments that lead to many of the killings. We haven't done anything about the desire to rob people: a store owner, a young musician, a beloved community activist.

At the root of Rochester's violence is a troubling culture, one that not only has little respect for life but also has created a no-snitching code of conduct. The result: Last September, a crowd watched as a Rochester mother was murdered, and the people who were responsible for her death are still at large.

How we change that culture?

One approach could be the Children's Zone, former Schools Superintendent Manny Rivera's plan to bring education, health care, social services, and other community resources together to help the families in one of Rochester's poorest neighborhoods. Children's Zone has just hired a director, and at long last, the program may get off the ground.

Frankly, if the Children's Zone isn't successful, I don't know what else we can come up with. For it to be successful, though, the community will have to support it, enthusiastically and selflessly - in money, in talent, in labor, in brainpower, in cooperation. Rochester doesn't have a good track record with this kind of broad, intensive effort.

You don't change a culture overnight, though. The longer we wait to get started, the longer we'll be staring at our violence problem and wishing it would go away. Or simply bottling it up.