DETROIT (AP) — A program that provides federal funds to groups in Detroit working to reduce homicides and shootings is showing reductions of 83%, 73% and 61% in some of the city’s most violent areas.
The numbers come as Detroit is on pace to continue setting historic lows in those crimes, according to the city.
ShotStoppers ‘ metrics measure the level of homicides and shootings in the current quarter compared to the same quarter in the two prior years and were released Monday by Mayor Mike Duggan.
The program kicked off in 2023. Going by names like Force Detroit, Detroit 300, Detroit Friends and Family, and New Era Community Connection, activists and residents are empowered to use their own strategies to prevent violence. Those strategies include teaching young people to think critically, improving training opportunities for adults, drug prevention and blight removal.
Each group also is alerted by the police department whenever there is a shooting in their zone, Duggan told The Associated Press last week.
“Because an hour later there will be a retaliation,” Duggan said. “The key is getting people to make different decisions. They’ve brokered agreements with groups beefing with one another. What they’re doing is making a difference.”
The six groups focus on parts of the city that between 2018 and 2022 were hotspots for homicides and shootings. The recent drops in what the city calls Community Violence Intervention — or CVI — zones are from August through October and are compared to the same three-month period in 2023 and 2022.
Homicides and shootings were down 35% in areas not part of the CVI zones.
The 83% reduction in the Detroit Friends and Family CVI zone on Detroit’s far northeast side was achieved through mediation strategies inside jails and juvenile facilities, working with the area’s youth and looking at the goings-on within social networks, said Ray Winans, the group’s founder.
“It’s not so much what we say to them. It’s more so what we hear from them,” Winans told The Associated Press last week. “We want to hear what their stories are. We know our stories and support them while they are going through theirs’.”
“This is a group of young men and women whose brains aren’t fully developed yet,” he added. “We don’t look at leadership in the sense of traditional leadership. We serve as an example of what’s possible. We deal with behavior modifications.”
Tamica Nixon, 48, has relatives who live in Winans’ CVI zone. She said just a year or so ago the sound of gunshots was prevalent.
“There were so many gunshots you would think that’s the type of things you would hear in a war,” Nixon said following Duggan’s announcement at a neighborhood church. “Everything has really improved now. It’s safer.”
The program is similar in name to the gunshot detection technology, ShotSpotter, which has been used and later dropped by Chicago and several other police departments in the United States.
Violent crime in Detroit has been trending down for several years, with annual homicides being at their lowest since 1966 when there were 214 homicides.
In 2023, Detroit recorded 252 homicides and 804 nonfatal shootings. Those numbers were 309 and 955, respectively, in 2022. The city recorded 308 homicides in 2021 compared to 323 in 2020. There also were 1,064 nonfatal shootings in 2021, down from 1,170 the year before.
Officials have placed some credit to the drop in violent crime citywide to the hiring of about 200 new police officers over the past few years and a partnership between the city, Wayne County and the state that improves coordination among agencies and courts. ShotStoppers’ success only appears to add to the lower numbers.
The project currently is funded by $10 million from the American Rescue Plan Act and each group started with a $175,000 base budget per quarter. Bonus grants are awarded to the groups that significantly cut serious violence in their areas.
With federal funding expiring in April, the statewide $100 million Public Safety & Violence Prevention Trust Fund being considered by Michigan lawmakers In Lansing could continue funding for the program. If approved, Detroit plans to add two new groups.
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