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A murder crime scene (AP Photo)
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by Dr. Richard Weinblatt, "The Cop Doc"
Detroit Police proudly touted crime statistics that showed the murder rate and other crimes dipped dramatically for 2009. In articles published Sunday in The Detroit News and by the UPI wire service, homicides in Detroit were down 27 percent over the the same time frame last year.
Detroit Assistant Police Chief Ralph Godbee, speaking for Chief Warren Evans, said that the results reflected the police chief's data driven crime reduction strategy. Evans has been in the post since July 6, 2009. He had previously served as the county sheriff.
Nationwide, major urban areas have experienced large drops in crime rates, particularly in the area of violent crimes. In some areas, such as New York City, the crime rates are back at the levels experienced in the 1960s. According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reports (UCR). The only nationwide exception appears to be some property crimes in rural areas.
Detroit officials have used mobile strike forces to target crime in certain neighborhoods. Detroit Police have taken a proactive response to crime in their city and have avoided the old version of reactive policing.
Police experts have credited the problem oriented policing approach for getting at the root of the crime problem and putting it out at it's source. The concept was first formulated by Rutgers University's George Kelling with his colleague James Q. Wilson under the "Broken Windows Theory" banner. Adapted by another academic, Herman Goldstein and his problem oriented policing, the move gained favor in more recent years.
The first large scale popular application came under then-chief William Bratton of the New York City Transit Police. Bratton later transferred the strategy with spectacular, high profile results to his stints as commissioner of the New York City Police Department and then as chief of the Los Angeles Police Department.
Other factors have also been credited with contributing to the drop in violent crime highlighted this week in Detroit. Among them is the population shift of folks moving out of the hard hit economy of Detroit, the aging of the city, as well as the nation. Some critics have pointed in the past to isolated instances of crimes being re-classified to artificially reduce violent crime statistics, although the abuse does not appear to be systemic. Crime statistic doctoring incidents have been reported in cities such as Baltimore and Philadelphia. No evidence of improprieties concerning the newly released Detroit crime rate data has surfaced.
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