- Coming up on "American Black Journal" is the City of Detroit, turning the tide on violent crime.

Police chief James White is here for a wide ranging conversation on last year's crime stats.

We're gonna talk about what led to this dramatic drop in homicides in the city and what work still remains.

You absolutely don't wanna miss today's show.

"American Black Journal" starts right now.

- [Narrator] From Delta faucets to Behr paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

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Support also provided by the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV.

- [Narrator 2] The DTE Foundation proudly supports 50 years of "American Black Journal" in covering African American history, culture, and politics.

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Thank you.

(upbeat jazz music) - Welcome to "American Black Journal."

I'm your host, Stephen Henderson.

As the new year gets underway, there is some really encouraging news coming from police departments across the nation.

Many cities saw a drop in violent crime and homicides during 2023.

That was the case here in Detroit as well.

The city recorded 252 homicides, and that is the lowest number in 57 years.

Non-fatal shootings were also down nearly 16%, and car jackings fell more than 33%.

I spoke with police chief James White about these latest crime stats, what contributed to the drop and where we go from here.

So you and I have talked a lot over the years since you've been chief and in fact before about the ways in which we need to reduce violent crime in the city of Detroit and in particular, deal with homicides in the city.

And I don't know another way to describe it, you got really good news at the end of 2023.

The number of homicides that year was down, and not just down a little, I mean down significantly, year over year.

Let's start with you telling me why you think that happened and what some of the strategies were that you guys were employing last year that may have something to do with this.

- You know, we're certainly not celebrating.

I mean, we had 252 homicides this year, and that's 252 too many, but that is down from 309 a year prior.

And so we're happy to see that our 12 point plan is working.

We're happy to see that our layered approach to crime fighting is working which involves addressing a number of things.

Number one, the things that drive violent crime in our community, those social issues, those socioeconomic issues, our partnerships with the federal government, our state and local partnerships with the Wayne County Sheriff's Department, Dwayne County Executive's Office, the US Attorney, Dawn Ison, has just been an amazing partner in helping us drive down violent crime with the One Detroit initiative, the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office, looking at ways of efficiently prosecuting cases, the backlog issues at 36 district as well as the district court.

So a lot of things have happened that has helped with this process.

I say it often, but it is worth repeating.

Having a mayor who is a former prosecutor helps when you're talking about crime solutions and budgeting and police.

And certainly when you look at the fact that we have raises for our officers and able to put more officers on the street with an average of a $10,000 raise for each officer, that's very, very impactful.

Cops on dots is what we call it.

We look at where we have upticks in crime and we put those officers in those uptick areas, using our data-driven enforcement.

- Yeah, so I wanna talk about a number of the things that you mentioned there in a little more in depth, and let's start with the focus on the larger context of crime, the things that drive violent crime in our community.

What are the things that the police department can do about those things?

A lot of those things aren't about policing necessarily, but what things are you employing that you think are actually having an effect?

- Yeah, that's a great question because in large part, police are reactive, right?

I mean, we get called when the crime happens so what we try to do is address those issues before the crime happens.

One big one is mental health.

Our mental health COVID response unit has been amazing.

We're gonna be adding to that with some help of some state dollars from the governor's office here pretty soon.

And our neighborhood police officers, those two entities, I think have the greatest impact on preventative crime than any entity that we have because they're on the ground, they're interacting with our community.

They're talking to our community.

And I'm speaking specifically to the NPOs and those handles are, for those who don't know, that's our neighborhood police officers.

Those are the people, before crime happens, can get out and address the issues that happen for quality of life to people who are committing problems in the neighborhood proactively.

And then they can do some proactive patrol techniques that we've deployed.

They can bring in other officers such as traffic enforcement.

Like if there's a drag racing or a drifting problem in a particular area, an NPO can go out and say, okay, you know, we need more officers in this area.

And they can coordinate that with their commander and their captain.

But then when you look at our mental health code response, you know, we know that mental health is a crisis in our community.

We know that a lot of our violent crime is driven by mental health issues.

We know that a number of our domestic violence victims are dealing with someone who is in some form of mental health crisis.

And so there's a lot of proactive work that goes into that.

We also have a program that we're excited about that's coming outta the mayor's office and being led by our deputy mayor, retired first assistant chief in the police department, Ty Benison.

And he's working with our CVI and that's our Community Violence Program where these are civilians that are going out and they're working in areas that we've identified as been historically high and violent crime.

And they're on the ground doing a number of proactive measures to ensure that community is supported, that neighborhood matters and that they got the resources available to them to hopefully disrupt crime before it happens.

- Yeah, yeah.

That CVI program is something that the mayor really kind of doubled down on recently and said that, look, we're gonna put a lot more emphasis on that.

We've always had community groups in Detroit that were focused on reducing crime, and it's always been a big part of the kind of criminal justice picture.

What do you hope happens as a result of these new initiatives that's not already, I guess, taking place?

How does what the mayor says he wants to do change the involvement of civilian groups?

- Yeah, you know, I think that we can learn a lot from what we're seeing.

The early returns are extraordinarily promising, in some areas a little bit surprising that they've had some early impact.

We're gonna learn a lot more over the next year, right, because we know the reward for good work is more work.

When we look at our numbers in 2023, you know, in order to sustain it, you're gonna have to do some innovative things, right?

And, you know, we wanna surpass the numbers of 23 and 23 was an incredible year for us with regards to our programs and our processes.

And to go into 24 and say that we're less than we were in 23, whew, that's gonna be a heavy lift.

So what's exciting for us is to see that the CVI has a chance of bringing something new to the table that we can learn from.

Six groups are out there, a couple of them have emerged from the pack, so to speak, as leaders in their area.

But again, I don't wanna mischaracterize it as a success just yet because it's so early, but what I'm excited about is we can look at what they're doing and if it is sustainable and then adopted across the landscape of our city and other areas, even beyond the moments of CVI, but adopting the programs that they have identified as being successful, you know, it gives you an opportunity to do some pretty unique and innovative things because we know that there are a lot of different things that drive violent crime in our community.

We just know it, right?

And by the time that the moment comes when the police are on a scene of a shooting, which is essentially a failed homicide, right, a non-fatal shooting, simply because the person lived does not mean that the intent wasn't to kill the person.

It just, whatever happened led to them living.

So you've got somebody that wanted to kill somebody that they didn't die.

That doesn't mean it's gonna stop, and that's not gonna stop that person from wanting that person dead.

So CVI brings in all those opportunities of bridging that gap.

Maybe that suspect, you know, is on the run from the police, likely.

That victim may take on a posture of wanting to retaliate against that suspect.

What we're hoping that CVI will be able to do is disrupt that communication and say, no, you don't need to retaliate and try to get back at him through violent means and ultimately ruining your life or hurting someone who has absolutely nothing to do with the problem or that you're having with this person.

We're hopeful that those types of conversations happen, that the police is much more involved in the police lane of enforcement and arrests and getting violent people off the street, but that the community itself has some degree of self-policing and regulating where police won't be as needed in some areas.

So that's a very long answer to a quick question, but those are some of the things that we're looking to have accomplished.

- Yeah, so I also wanna talk about partnerships.

You mentioned some of the partnerships that you think are having an effect on violent crime in the city.

Talk about how important that is that the police department's not kind of operating on its own.

- Yeah, you know, I took over as chief two and a half years ago.

I was an assistant chief for 11 years prior to that and I understand the value of collaboration.

It can't just be us.

We all are vested in this community.

Now we got really fortunate and blessed to have a prosecutor, Kim Worthy who lives, knows Detroit, right?

Busiest county in the state.

And then Don Ison, who is the US attorney, who is born in the city of Detroit, graduated from Cass Tech High School.

So when you're talking to two very dynamic women in our state that are both committed to the city of Detroit, it certainly makes the conversations go a lot smoother as police chief when they're as invested in our city or invested in our city as you are as a police chief.

And your meetings are more about solutions than problems.

Yes, all three of us have problems that we're trying to navigate.

We need, you know, certainly more resources and things such as that.

But at the end of the day, it's solution-based meetings and they have both been extraordinarily dynamic partners.

And what they bring with them is leveraging other resources that they have.

Prosecutor Worthy is committed to putting community prosecutors in precincts.

US Attorney Ison is doing peaceniks and focusing on violent crime in the two most violent precincts in our community and that's eight and nine, but also putting that same impact in every precinct in the city of Detroit.

I just talked to her yesterday about, you know, the summer surge and what that looks like, doing some community town halls and bringing the message to the community, talking about going to barbershops.

I mean, you got a US attorney who's talking about, hey, let's go to a barbershop and deliver the message on violent crime and what folks in that barbershop could take back with them to their respective areas of our city and talk about, A, driving crime down, number one but number two, the things that impact violent crime, people needing jobs, people needing resources, people needing education and pointing them into those directions where they could get those things and hopefully not be A, crime victim or B, crime perpetrator.

And for those who choose the life of crime, let's have a very focused approach to getting those violent offenders off the street and recognizing that everyone's not a criminal, right?

I mean, actually statistically, you know, the criminal element in our city is very, very small; however, it wreaks havoc on our community.

So I really enjoy working with both of them.

We've got a very dynamic Wayne County executive, who's committed to violent crime reduction in our community in Warren Evans who, again, former sheriff, former police chief.

So I've got a lot of really good partners that are at the table and funding that is being spread out for the purpose of reducing crime, not only in Detroit, but in this region.

But certainly we wanna make sure that Detroit gets its part and we're getting that with these relationships.

- Yeah, yeah.

So I wanna talk about some other kind of background issues that I think always are lurking here in Detroit that have some relationship to the violent crime and to homicides.

I wanna start with the clearance rate, the percentage of homicides that we're able to, you know, identify a perpetrator and get that person prosecuted.

We've had tremendous trouble with that in the past.

In Detroit, the rate has not been high.

What does it look like right now and what relationship do you think that has to the overall homicide number?

- Well the homicide rate, we called out the year roughly around 50%, which is, you know, right at the national average of homicide clearance rates.

So we're not in a time that you and I both remember, years ago during the bankruptcy where we're, you know, 20% closure rate, you know?

I mean, that was just horrible.

So 50% closure rate, as I indicated, is roughly around the national average.

I'd certainly wanna be around the 60 to 70%.

I'd love to be around a hundred percent, but, you know, realistically that's not going to happen.

There's so many different things that impact closure rate.

But one interesting measurable, I think we can all take from those rates, particularly with non-fatal shootings and homicides is the relationship with the police agency.

There has to be community trust in order for people to participate in the prosecution of a perpetrator, and for a variety of reasons but there has to be trust that if they share this information, it's gonna be kept confidential and it's gonna be moved through the judicial process professionally and respectfully of the person who is making the complaint.

Obviously a homicide has to have a family representative in the state represent them.

But as it relates to non-fatal shootings, I think there's a direct correlation with the non-fatal shooting closure rate and community trust because of the dynamics involved in that particular crime.

So we're looking at that and our closure rates on non-fatal shootings is not where we want 'em.

And my emphasis this year is going to be to increase that closure rate, and we're doing that through social workers, being assigned to our investigative operations.

We're gonna be hiring social workers.

We got hired a few already to participate and help walk our victims through the process.

You know, we like to think that we're completely and 100% relatable in police policing, but sometimes I find that we speak a lot of cop jargon that is intimidating to some, that nobody knows what we're talking about.

And so we're gonna get social workers who will be a bridge between the police and the victims to talk through what this process looks like, what the expectations are, what does it look like when you have to go to court, how are you gonna get to court and we think that's gonna help with our non-fatal shooting closure rate.

As far as our homicide closure rate, you know, 50%, as I said, is strong.

But, you know, if you look at our 252 homicides, quick math tells us I got over 125 people that don't have some degree of closure in their families as it relates to their victim of homicide.

So we have to do better, but we're confident that we can, and we've got a plan and a process that we're gonna be deploying here pretty soon.

- Yeah, yeah.

I also wanna talk about the national trend, which is for violent crime and homicides to go down.

I spent a long time living in the Baltimore, Washington area.

Both of those cities saw dramatic drops in their homicide rate or the homicide count last year as well.

How much of what we're seeing here is just about that friend and if that's true, how do you capitalize on it, right?

How do you make sure that we keep going in the same direction?

- You know, Stephen you always ask great questions and I will tell you, I'm a data person like you and I look at trend lines.

I look at what the Detroit Police Department is doing and how we compare to other major cities.

And what a lot of cities are reporting is a return to normalization pre-COVID, right?

So you had COVID, this thing that happened that nobody saw coming, no one understood what it was.

People were hopeless and didn't know if we were even going to live beyond it.

It resulted in an uptick of violent crime that, along with civil unrest that which overlaid COVID and lined up perfectly to create this uptick in violence around the United States.

So when I look at Detroit, I don't look at just pre-COVID, right?

I look at the COVID surge, where we are now, then I go pre-COVID and then I go to what does the normalization data tell us when Detroit is performing like Detroit.

And I know that sounds a little weird, but, you know, we know that at the end of 2020 things were becoming somewhat disjointed as it relates to the uptick of COVID.

Then we know that COVID you know, 2020, 2021, coming at the end of it and when it became something that we knew we were gonna have to live with, and the community all reacted to that, right, whether it be people working from home, whether it be more violence, mental health issues.

And so what I'm happy to say is that our numbers are lower than even pre-COVID numbers.

So, you know, our downturn in crime is not the normalization of COVID.

We're lower than we were before COVID.

And so the sustainability of that will be hard work, more officers on the street, smart deployment and using the data to drive our decision making.

You just can't police a city this size without letting the data tell you where your cops need to be 'cause I don't have enough cops to put one on every corner, but I have enough cops to put 'em on the corners that they need to be in at particular times throughout the week based on the crime trends.

- Yeah, yeah.

I also wanna give you a chance to talk about two high profile murders that happened in the city last year.

And I think it's always kind of controversial to talk about what's a murder that gets attention and what murders don't get attention and why, but there were two homicides that made a lot of news and had a lot of attention: one in Lafayette Park, the other in Boston Edison, one successful doctor, the other, someone who is a prominent member of the downtown synagogue in Detroit.

And I wanna have you talk about how satisfied, I guess you are with the way the department has handled those murders, but also the pressure, I guess it puts on you when murders happen that people I guess don't think are, quote unquote, normal, right?

Murders that are outside of the places or the kinds of communities that people think they happened inside.

- That's a very interesting assessment of what has transpired with these two particular cases.

And, you know, they're all important to me, every single one of them, every single one of 'em.

We had a beautiful mother leaving work, a nurse in the northwest side of Detroit who was brutally murdered in a parking lot of a party store.

She picked up a bottle of wine to celebrate the holidays with her husband last winter.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Very tragic, very sad and we were able to close that case, you know, within a reasonable amount of time.

I know all the cases.

I live, 'em.

They keep me up at night.

And I think about the victims and the families.

I had a 11-year-old child that we're focused on right now, 11-year-old rollerskating in front of his house and was a victim of a drive-by a couple nights ago.

- Yeah.

- I have not gotten one phone call about that case, but I'm still committed and focused on doing everything we can to bring that family justice.

- And that's gotta be frustrating.

I mean, in a city where, you know, two or 300 people are murdered every year, most of them go unremarked.

They don't get press coverage, which means that most people don't know about 'em and the implication is we expect that this is going to happen to certain people in certain neighborhoods in certain circumstances.

And then if it happens outside of that, you know, it gets a lot more attention.

- Yeah, it does.

And, you know, it's disheartening sometimes because I want the focus on all these cases, but speaking specifically to those two, I'm very proud of the work that the officers, the investigators, the detective bureau, homicide detectives have done.

You know, we don't take this work lightly, you know?

These officers, these detectives work hours and hours and hours, weekends and nights.

And this is not a, you could come in at 8:00 and go home at 4:00 job, right?

You come in when you wake up, you go home when the work's done for that day, and some days that's 10, 12, 15 hour days.

The investigators are passionate about this work.

They're committed to it.

I get briefings on these cases at 11, 12, 1:00 in the morning.

I have been on the phone with detectives in tears that we have made an arrest, and that's how passionate they are.

I will tell you, we've been talking about this 11-year-old murder, the 11-year-old child who was murdered and, you know, to listen to veteran detectives voices, cracking, talking about this case, you know, it just tells you how passionate and committed they are.

But to your question, sir, I'm proud of the work that we've done, particularly we'll start with Ms. Wall, a beautiful member of our community.

And it's a sad and tragic event that led to her death.

I'm confident in the work that has been done.

I'm confident in our suspect.

Obviously I can't go into more than that.

And I'm confident that that same level of work ethic has been and will be deployed on Dr. Hoover.

But we're not gonna be pressured.

We're not gonna be rushed.

This is too important of work to let political pressure and media pressure and community opinion force you into moving too quickly and haphazardly that can result in the destruction of the case.

But we're gonna move deliberately because we've got one bite of this apple that's something called double jeopardy.

We're not gonna just run around and arrest folks and say, we think this is who did it.

We're gonna be able to prove that case.

And then there's another part of this, right?

I'm only one part, then there's madam prosecutor who has to prosecute the case and sign the warrant.

- Yeah.

- And you know, we have to work together to ensure that she has everything she needs to do her part of this process.

I'm confident we're on the right track.

We're gonna keep working.

- That is gonna do it for us this week.

You can find out more about our guests at americanblackjournal.org and you can connect with us anytime on social media.

Take care, and we'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] From Delta faucets to Behr paint, Masco corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV.

- [Narrator 2] The DTE Foundation proudly supports 50 years of "American Black Journal" in covering African-American history, culture, and politics.

The DTE Foundation and "American Black Journal" partners in presenting African-American perspectives about our communities and in our world.

- [Narrator] Also brought to you by Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.

Thank you.

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