Homicides on the rise

According to a new study published in the Detroit Free Press (article here), while most violent crimes have been declining in the D, murder is on the rise.  The DPD has decided to take officers off of desk duty and send them out in the street one day a week.  They're going to try to develop "community relations", which is a fancy way of saying that they're searching for people who are willing to be informants.

This isn't an automatic answer to the problem.  Informants can only be trusted to the extent that they're getting enough out of the deal to make it worth their time to provide valid information.  Those same informants are risking their own lives to work with the DPD, since gang activity is flourishing, and the crack trade is still roaring strong.

Lt. Dwane Blackmon of the Detroit homicide unit was at a public meeting recently, and he indicated that the problem leading to all of these murders was "risky behavior" (see source, here): gang activity, drug dealing, and retaliation.  All of those are a source of concern, but for informants, retaliation is obviously a bigger problem than for most people.

The gangs in Detroit are very active.  The Vice Lords, Latin Counts, Young Guns and Cash Flow Posse, just to name a few, come and go in these streets, bringing violence, drugs and prostitution with them.  It's also seeming increasingly like some of them are also bringing orders from out of town.  I'm not in a position yet to say who's calling the shots, but it seems like some local gangs are doing step-and-fetch-it work for bigger players, possibly from New York, possibly from Chicago.  And I'm talking big players.  National players, players who don't limit themselves to "representing" the 2800 block of some street.  The local boys are spending a lot of time nosing around on behalf of their heavy clients, and they seem to be interested in projects that are connected straight back to the City Council.

Are the gangs and the Council both working for the same party?  Is someone out there, outside the city, calling the shots?  What's the aim?  These are just some of the questions that need answers.

I'm not sure what they want, at least not yet.  But I'm the Motown Investigator, and I have my eyes on them.