A Call to Action from Mayor Dave Bing and Law Enforcement

By Karen Hudson Samuels/Tell Us Detroit

DETROIT (Tell Us Detroit) - Detroit Mayor Dave Bing has brought together federal, state and law enforcement resources to support his “Call to Action”, a unified push to stop the rise of violent crime in the city. ” We as a community need to be outraged” Bing said.

“The reality is overall crime in the city of Detroit continues to decline, overall crime is down 10 percent from last year” Bing said, “That’s the good news; the bad news is that homicides are on the rise

The Mayor said he wants to reverse that trend by teaming the resources of the Detroit Police Department, the State’s Attorney General, and the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan and the FBI.

Leaders from these law enforcement agencies joined the Mayor in a Wednesday morning news conference to talk about how they are partnering to fight the violent crime crisis.

Mayor Bing issued strong call to the community to “Help us to take out city back.”

The community needs to the “eyes and ears’ of what’s going on and cannot expect law enforcement to shoulder all the responsibility of crime prevention Bing said. The criminals need to know someone is watching.

Police Chief Godbee acknowledged Detroit police officers for closing five of the seven homicide cases committed during the weekend of August 19th when 15 people were shot in a 24-hour period. Chief Godbee said they have strong leads on the sixth case and hope to close in soon.

“The federal prosecution of gun violence has gone up 75% since last year and is on are on pace to exceed that number this year’ said U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade.

But even that is not enough said McQuade who is adding attorneys a unit in her office and has made fighting violent crime a top priority of the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Eastern District.

When federal and local law enforcement work together McQuade said they have an impact and gave the example of two men sentenced to over 20 years each for committing a string of armed robberies at dollars stores in Detroit.

McQuade said “I would like to send a message to criminals and people who are using guns to commit crime in city of Detroit if you commit serious gun crime in Detroit you will do hard time” .

With school starting up Mayor Bing said the Safe Passage to School program has torn down over 4,000 abandoned homes and is working but said the community is still needed to help bring criminals to justice, Bing said tearing down buildings is not enough.