Detroit Police Department Research Articles

Examining the role of firearm involvement in repeat intimate partner violence assaults

BackgroundIntimate partner violence (IPV) remains a pervasive and complex issue with significant social and public health implications. The nexus of firearms and intimate partner violence (IPV) is an especially dangerous one. However, little is known about how firearm involvement can influence the risk of repeat IPV assaults.MethodsWe use data from 346 male perpetrated IPV incidents reported to the Detroit Police Department between December 2016 and April 2017 to examine the role of firearm involvement in IPV recidivism during a 5 and half year follow up period. Employing a conditional gap-time frailty model that accommodates heterogeneity among individuals through a frailty term, we analyze time to multiple IPV assaults that occur over the follow up period. We identify various pathways through which firearms impact the likelihood of subsequent IPV incidents, including intimidation, threats, and use of firearms, while controlling for observable perpetrator characteristics to understand the explicit roles of firearms.ResultsFirearm involvement at the index assault was not associated with IPV recidivism. However, involvement of firearms in past IPV assaults significantly increased the risk of subsequent physical IPV. The discrepancy is likely arising from a high degree of censoring among individuals who were armed with a firearm during the index assault.ConclusionOur research reveals a nuanced relationship between firearm involvement and IPV recidivism, shedding light on the multifaceted dynamics at play. By elucidating the intricate dynamics at the intersection of firearms and intimate partner violence, our study underscores the need for targeted policy interventions and preventative measures aimed at reducing IPV recidivism.

“We want to be neutral”:The Right-Wing ExtremistPolitics of 1930s Detroit Police Movie Censorship

This article examines the relationship between policing, film censorship, and right-wing extremist politics through a case study of the Detroit Police Department Censor Bureau's censorship of leftist cinema during the 1930s. This period saw the police Censor Bureau repeatedly target films suspected of harboring sympathy for communist ideology as well as films openly critical of Hitler and fascism. I place this history within the context of the rise of nativist and fascist movements in southeast Michigan as a whole, and within the Detroit Police Department in particular, during the years leading up to the Second World War.

Insights from law enforcement personnel during the COVID-19 pandemic: a focus on violence reduction and prevention initiatives and firearm violence

ABSTRACT In the United States (U.S.), elevated levels of firearm violence following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in late March 2020 drew attention to efforts taken by law enforcement to reduce and prevent firearm violence through policing innovations. However, it is not well-understood how operational changes in policing during this time impacted these efforts. Our study is the first to consider the perceptions and experiences of law enforcement personnel during the pandemic as it relates to violence reduction and prevention initiatives (VRPIs) and firearm violence, more broadly. By leveraging partnerships between an academic research team and law enforcement practitioners, our action research approach is well-positioned to offer recommendations to support policies and practices that are responsive to emerging crises. While our study is based within the U.S., our focus on the impact of a global phenomenon on firearm violence is of international interest. To this end, an anonymous and voluntary online survey was distributed to both sworn and civilian personnel of the Detroit Police Department (Detroit, Michigan) in August 2020 to understand how the department’s VRPIs and related routine police operations were impacted during the pandemic, and identify potential community and criminal justice system drivers of firearm violence during this time. Our focus on the city of Detroit represents a unique opportunity to explore these connections given the city’s volume of firearm violence, as well as the severity and scope of challenges faced in cities of color. We discuss how our findings can be applied to guide the construction of systems that are more robust against and responsive to external and internal pressures. We also provide several recommendations to guide future research in this area.

“Detroit under STRESS”: The Campaign to Stop Police Killings and the Criminal State in Detroit

Abstract During the early 1970s, a broad-based campaign comprising liberal and radical organizations emerged to confront the Detroit Police Department’s clandestine “Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets” (STRESS) unit. The campaign to defeat STRESS drew from a diverse set of tactics; activists organized marches, demonstrations, and political education events and engaged in movement-based lawyering, public testimony, and electoral politics. As casualties of STRESS accumulated, Detroiters framed the unit as a killer squad with the primary purpose of terrorizing Black Detroiters. The STRESS killings during the early 1970s and the movement against them made Detroit a flashpoint for debate about race, crime policy, and effective policing, with far-reaching implications for both the police and the city. The campaign to defeat STRESS demonstrated the efficacy of Detroit’s Left during the early 1970s. The left wing of the movement, comprised of radical Black Power activists and white New Leftists, accomplished two overlapping goals. It not only helped build a vast coalition of organizations around the issue of police brutality but also, importantly, developed and articulated its own original analysis of radical criminology. Leftists critiqued the criminal state as the nexus between the state and private sector; these institutions swallowed resources and damaged lives. Challenging liberal theories of crime emphasizing individual agency, radicals advanced a structural analysis emphasizing racism’s and capitalism’s destructive impulses—deindustrialization, exploitation of workers, violent policing, and privatization, in the service of consumption and capital investment.

REAL TIME TEMPORALITIES AND MORE-THAN-HUMAN ECOLOGIES OF DETROIT’S PROJECT GREEN LIGHT

On January 1st 2016, 8 gas stations in the Detroit metro area began streaming from surveillance cameras to the Detroit Police Department’s Real Time Crime Center—the auspicious start of Detroit’s Project Green Light (PGL). Presently, cameras are located in over 680 sites around the city. The surveillance initiative’s rapid expansion has been met with significant pushback from the community regarding its quiet incorporation of automated face recognition technologies. As activists have argued, the use of a technology with a significantly higher error rate for people of color to surveil a population that is over 80% nonwhite risks reproducing and exacerbating existing racial biases within the criminal justice system (Detroit Community Technology Project, 2019). Many of the concerns that community members have raised, including the possibility of algorithmic misidentification and the influence of PGL cameras on residents’ use of public space, speak to the question of what human and nonhuman agencies and relationalities exist in PGL spaces and their impact on the residents and landscape of Detroit. In this paper, I focus on the discursive flexibility of the term real time in PGL to diagram the web of human and nonhuman relations within the space. I trace three narratives of real time mapping the human and nonhuman temporalities they reference. Informed by a theoretical framework of Digital Studies, Critical Race Studies, and Indigenous Studies, I explore the racial justice possibilities of theorizing resistance inclusive of more-than-human perspectives and ethics.

Policing the Poor in Detroit

On the afternoon of November 15, 2013, 150 police officers raided the Colony Arms, a low-income housing complex on Detroit's East Side. One resident described the scene: "I saw…cop cars with the sirens…some kind of tank blocking the back alley, at least two helicopters doing I don't know what…. The officers had real, real long rifles. It was like the army or something…like an invasion…." In all, thirty arrests were made, twenty-one related to parking violations. These arrests yielded a total of zero convictions. The raid occurred on a Friday; all those arrested were released from jail by Monday. The raid was declared a resounding success by the Detroit Police Department (DPD) and all of the city's major media outlets. The raid on the Colony Arms inaugurated Operation Restore Order, a series of seventeen paramilitary police operations carried out between 2013 and 2015. Over the course of the operation, police made over a thousand arrests; as in the Colony Arms raid, however, these yielded little in the way of prosecutions.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Shelving Justice: The Discovery of Thousands of Untested Rape Kits in Detroit

In August 2009, approximately 11,000 sexual assault kits (SAKs; “rape kits”) were found in a Detroit police department storage facility, the vast majority of which had never been tested for DNA evidence. To address this problem, a multidisciplinary action research project was formed to bring together researchers and practitioners from law enforcement, prosecution, forensic sciences, medicine/nursing, and victim advocacy to develop evidence–based response strategies. In this paper, we will draw upon qualitative interviews with Detroit stakeholders, archival records, and ethnographic observations to examine the events surrounding the discovery of the rape kits and why police personnel did not view the accumulation of so many untested SAKs as a problem. Over the course of this three–year action research project, Detroit stakeholders worked together to enact local– and state–level reforms to test these kits and to prevent this problem from happening again.

Implementation of Targeted Pedestrian Traffic Enforcement Programs in an Urban Environment

The purpose of this study was to develop, test, and evaluate two pilot enforcement programs aimed at the improvement of pedestrian safety in the city of Detroit, Michigan, through reductions in the incidence of pedestrian traffic violations. Separate targeted enforcement programs were conducted in coordination with the Detroit Police Department and the Wayne State University Police Department. Both programs demonstrated that targeted enforcement could be used to reduce the rate of pedestrian traffic violations effectively and that these changes could be sustained for some time after enforcement had been completed. The city-wide program was found to reduce violations by up to 17.1% during the enforcement period, with sustained reductions of 7.8% being detected several weeks after enforcement was completed. Similarly, the program on the Wayne State University campus reduced violations by 27% during enforcement and showed sustained reductions of 9.8%. The results generally varied on a case-by-case basis, and infrastructure deficiencies contributed to increased violations. As a part of this study, a strategy for collection of data in the field was developed. The strategy allowed the covert, unobtrusive monitoring of pedestrian behavior during the periods before, during, and after enforcement.

US Guys: The True and Twisted Mind of the American Man by Charlie LeDuff

US Guys: The True and Twisted Mind American Man Charlie LeDuff. Penguin Press, New York, 2006 I first saw Charlie LeDuff on his ten-part television program, Only in America. It was an interesting, if uncomfortable, look how average US man struggles to achieve some semblance meaning in a confused and changing world. I next saw LeDuff on The Colbert Report when he was pitching book, US Guys: The True and Twisted Mind American Man, which is based on exploits that were subject his television show. The book could have an essentialist and nostalgic look an idealized US masculinity immersed in crisis, one that whitewashes experiences people color, gay men, poor, and generally marginalized. I was pleasantly surprised to find that LeDuff makes no attempt to offer up such a vision. Indeed, after providing a list masculine stereotypes, LeDuff states, of course, no such man has ever existed and no man probably ever will (x). LeDuff also rejects contemporary specter crisis, instead arguing that crises have existed across space and time: They say American man is falling to pieces; that he is spooked, spiritually deadened, dissociated, infantilized. That's just television talking. There's nothing wrong with us guys, except everything. But that's way it's always been (xii). Rather than reaching back to some romanticized past, LeDuff's book is located squarely in murky, discomfiting reality twenty-first century life. The picture that he paints is not a pretty one and language that he uses to describe it is frequently stark and occasionally coarse. He takes us across in search the angry, forgotten middling from where I come (xi). In so doing, he evokes an image that is in strong need repair. Drawing on assertion John Edwards that are two Americas, haves and have-nots, LeDuff argues that there is least a third America, have somewhats, and a fourth, self-defeated, people who fell off table and are never getting up to supper plate (3). One sees shards these people when he visits a circus, motorcycle fight club, gay rodeo, semi-professional football league, religious revival, war re-enactment, Burning Man Festival, and other sundry locations and events. There are no answers here, only questions, deep and troubling questions: book is not a sociological study. It offers no solutions to problems crime, immigration, economy, spiritual bankruptcy or other maladies afflicting male citizen United States America (x-xi). Yet many problems LeDuff outlines do not affect just males and perhaps that is why his comments on masculinity sometimes slip to background. These are American problems and in reviewing LeDuff's observations it becomes clear that is suffering from a crisis in leadership and a lack focus on how to solve macro-level issues stemming from globalization, race relations, and poverty as well as micro-level problems like spiritual confusion, and ennui life. LeDuff's visit to homicide division Detroit Police Department is particularly striking as he focuses on death in a dying city (156). He begins chapter by recounting a conversation detectives have about beheading an Arab-American woman, killed her husband's hands because an alleged affair. LeDuff points out that detectives seemed more interested in her breasts, which every guy in precinct stopped by to look at (150), than her murder. LeDuff is tongue in check as he points out audacity situation: Tits. You can't help but stare them, whether they're attached to a headless corpse or they appear in your run-of-the-mill crime scene (150). This same perverse callousness seems to appear in an inappropriate crime scene photograph a murder victim, a prostitute, who perished hands a serial killer (151). …

"Do Whites Have Rights?": White Detroit Policemen and "Reverse Discrimination" Protests in the 1970s

By the time Judge Ralph Freeman announced his decision on affirmative action in the Detroit Police Department on May 9, 1975, the crowd of white protesters outside had swelled to over a thousand. In the large, marbled U.S. District Courthouse on West Lafayette Avenue in downtown Detroit, Freeman ordered that the traditional “last hired, first fired” seniority principle be modified so that police officers recently hired under the city's new affirmative action plan retain their positions in the face of massive layoffs. As Freeman delivered his ruling, the line of Detroit Police Officers Association (dpoa) members, their family and friends, city council members, and union sympathizers from as far away as Buffalo and Chicago stretched through the streets surrounding the courthouse. They held signs reading “Detroit Is an Un-Equal Employment Opportunity Employer,” “Uphold Our Contract,” “Do Whites Have Rights?,” and “Real Affirmative Action: Fire the Mayor.” The last sign referred to Coleman A. Young, the city's black mayor and the author of the much-hated affirmative action plan.1

"Kumho" and How We Know

JOSEPH SANDERS [*] I INTRODUCTION In the summer of 1999, the United States Supreme Court issued the last in a trilogy of 1990s cases dealing with the question of the admissibility of expert testimony in federal courts. [1] In Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael, [2] the Court was asked to decide if the judicial gatekeeping role it set forth in the first of these three cases, Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, [3] applied only to knowledge or to all expert testimony. The court concluded that all expert testimony must be both relevant and reliable before it can be admitted, but that the specific factors set forth in Daubert to judge the reliability of scientific evidence may be supplemented and perhaps replaced by factors when expert testimony is based on technical or other specialized knowledge. [4] The opinion explicitly recognized that not all expert testimony can be judged by a single standard because not all experts know things in exactly the same way. [5] This point had been colorfully made five years earlier in the Sixth Circuit's opinion in Berry v. City of Detroit. [6] In Berry, while wrestling with the admissibility of the expert testimony of a sociologist cum sheriff [7] as to whether the disciplinary practices of the Detroit police department demonstrated a policy of deliberate indifference to the rights of the citizenry, thus giving rise to municipal liability under 42 U.S.C. [sections] 1983, the Sixth Circuit made the following comparison between scientific and nonscientific expert testimony: The distinction between scientific and non-scientific expert testimony is a critical one. By way of illustration, if one wanted to explain to a jury how a bumblebee is able to fly, an aeronautical engineer might be a helpful witness. Since flight principles have some universality, the expert could apply general principles to the case of the bumblebee. Conceivably, even if he had never seen a bumblebee, he still would be qualified to testify, as long as he was familiar with its component parts. On the hand, if one wanted to prove that bumblebees always take off into the wind, a beekeeper with no scientific training at all would be an acceptable expert witness if a proper foundation were laid for his conclusions. The foundation would not relate to his formal training, but to his firsthand observations. In words, the beekeeper does not know any more about flight principles than the jurors, but he has seen a lot more bumblebees than they have. [8] How do aeronautical engineers and beekeepers know what they know? How does their knowledge differ and how is it the same? The insight of the Berry opinion is that a satisfactory answer to the legal question of admissibility is in part contingent upon our understanding of the nature of expert knowledge. But this alone is not enough. Admissibility standards are also influenced by the organization of the legal system itself. In this article, I attempt to shed some light on different ways experts (and non-experts) know things and then to offer some thoughts on how this should influence the legal assessment of the admissibility of expert testimony. [9] In Part II, I review the legal developments leading up to Kumho. I give special emphasis to the alternative approaches to admissibility reflected in the Frye [10] and Daubert [11] tests and to the Kumho decision to sweep non-scientific evidence under the Daubert umbrella. [12] Part III addresses two questions: What is the law's implicit epistemology with respect to scientific knowledge, and how does scientific knowledge differ from forms of knowing? I argue that while there may be differences between intellectual fields along such dimensions as a reliance on individual experience as a basis of judgment, and the ability of fields to isolate themselves from political, economic, and social pressures, the differences are often as great within disciplines as between them. …

Validation of the PowerPlex 1.1™ Loci for Use in Human Identification

STR typing is now the favored method of DNA analysis for the purposes of human identification in the forensic community. The Forensic Services Division of the Detroit Police Department has completed its validation of the PowerPlex 1.1 loci (CSF1PO, TPOX, THO1, vWA, D16S539, D7S820, D13S317, and D5S818) for use in forensic casework. Detroit Metro Area Red Cross samples were typed from each of five racial/ethnic groups--the Hispanic, Caucasian, African American, Asian, and American Indian populations--and allele and genotype frequencies were calculated. A rare off-ladder variant (9.1 allele at D7S820) was identified among the database samples. A number of validation studies were performed. DNA was extracted from different substrates and typed as expected, except for the DNA extracted from leather (signal absent from the D16S539, D7S820, D13S317, CSF1PO, and TPOX loci) and from dirt (no PCR product generated). The minor contributor in the mixture study (250 pg input DNA) was facile to discern. The Concordance study, the variety of fluids from the same individual, and NIST standards studies all produced the expected results. Finally, STR data confirmed previous DNA typing results from adjudicated casework samples.

The genuine victim and prosecutors’ charging decisions in sexual assault cases

This study examined the effect of victim characteristics and evidence factors on prosecutors’ decisions to file charges in sexual assault cases. Social scientists and legal scholars argue that sexual assault case processing decisions are affected by stereotypes of real rapes and genuine victims. They assert that complainants whose backgrounds and behavior conform to the image of a genuine victim will be taken more seriously, and their allegations treated more seriously, than complainants whose backgrounds and behavior are at odds with this image. We used a sample of arrests for sexual assault made by the Detroit Police Department in 1989 to test these assertions. We combined six victim characteristics to create a genuine victim scale, and we examined the effect of this scale, as well as a number of evidence factors, on prosecutors’ charging decisions. We performed separate analyses on cases with child victims and cases with adolescent or adult victims. We found that the genuine victim scale did not influence charging decisions in cases with child victims, but was theonly significant predictor in cases involving adolescent or adult victims. In contrast, none of the four evidence factors affected charging in cases with adult victims, and only one of these factors was related to charging in cases involving children. These findings suggest that prosecutors attempt to avoid uncertainty by screening out sexual assault cases unlikely to result in a conviction because of questions about the victim’s character, the victim’s behavior, and the victim’s credibility.

Loran-C Vehicle Tracking in Detroit's Public Safety Dispatch System

In 1928, the city of Detroit had the distinction of being the first city in the world to introduce police radios and two-way radio police dispatch. Sixty years later, another world first by the City of Detroit Police Department was announced by Mayor Coleman Young: the introduction of emergency vehicle tracking integrated with the “Enhanced 911” emergency dispatch system. This system is the most ambitious undertaking of its kind and incorporates many innovative features, including automatic tracking of the largest fleet of Loran-C equipped vehicles. A complete floor of the Detroit Police Headquarters has been renovated to provide the most advanced facility for public safety dispatch. This paper presents concepts and some details of the Automatic Vehicle Location System developed to complete the elements of the Detroit Public Safety Dispatch System.

The Elderly as Victims of Crime

Journal Article The Elderly as Victims of Crime Get access Senior Power and How to Use It, 16mm/19min/color/1975. Producer and Distributor, Prose Productions, Inc., Distribution Center, P.O. Box 678, North Hollywood, CA 91603; 213/760-0066. Sale $440, rental $110.Crime: Senior Alert, 16mm/18min/color/1978. Producer, Gordon Kerckhoff. Distributor, Aims Instructional Media, Inc., 626 Justin Avenue, Clendale, CA 91201; 213/240-9300. Sale $315, rental $30 (1-3 days).Self-Protection: It's a Matter of Common Sense, slidetape/15min/color/1983. Producer, Detroit Police Department. Distributor, Criminal Justice Services, Program Department, American Association of Retired Persons, 1909 K Street NW, Washington, DC 20049; 202/728-4363. Sale $20; rental, single presentations at no charge. Robert McKinlay, BS Robert McKinlay, BS Editor Education for Aging News Institute on Aging College of Boca RatonBoca Raton, FL 33431 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar The Gerontologist, Volume 24, Issue 5, October 1984, Pages 554–555, https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/24.5.554 Published: 01 October 1984

A CLASSIFICATION OF HOMICIDES

CriminologyVolume 11, Issue 4 p. 525-540 A CLASSIFICATION OF HOMICIDES James Boudouris, James BoudourisSearch for more papers by this author James Boudouris, James BoudourisSearch for more papers by this author First published: February 1974 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-9125.1974.tb00612.xCitations: 11 AUTHOR'S NOTE: I wish to thank Dr. Hyman Rodman, Merrill-Palmer Institute, Detroit, for his helpful comments and reading of this paper. This research originated with a suggestion from the chairman of my dissertation committee, Dr. Frank Hartung, Department of Sociology, Wayne State University. I am indebted to the members of several bureaus of the Detroit Police Department for their cooperation and comments while I was collecting the data JAMES BOUDOURIS received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan. He is currently Assistant Project Director of the Addiction Research and Evaluation Team, and a Research Associate, Columbia University School of Social Work, New York City. AboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume11, Issue4February 1974Pages 525-540 RelatedInformation

Police Patrol Vehicles

This study concerns the design of the police patrol vehicle as used by the Detroit Police Department. The objective was to identify areas where the vehicle could be improved so that its desired functions could be performed safely and expeditiously. Most of the recommendations resulting from this study involve the man-machine relationship between the patrolman and his vehicle. Because this was a preliminary study and only covered a short time span, a number of recommendations identify areas requiring further research.

The child slayer. A 25-year survey of homicides involving preadolescent victims.

THE SLAYING of an infant or Preadolescent child is a crime with many aspects peculiar to itself. Motive, method, and identity of assailant find no parallel among crimes involving adult victims. Problems unique to the child slayer are encountered in his detection and prosecution. In many instances the psychiatrist becomes involved in the determination of his final disposition. This paper is a presentation of a 25-year survey of felonious homicides in a large metropolitan area in which the victims were infants or preadolescent children. During the period from September 1940 to September 1965, the Homicide Bureau of the Detroit Police Department investigated 134 suspected homicides in the city of Detroit, the victims of which were preadolescent children. In these 134 cases, 71 defendants were found guilty of felonious homicide (murder in the first or second degree, or manslaughter in the first

The Changing Face of Criminal Law

Donald S. Leonard has been prominent in public service in the State of Michigan, having served for 30 years with the Michigan State Police retiring in 1952 as Commissioner to accept appointment as Commissioner of the Detroit Police Department, from which he resigned in 1954. Presently he is serving as Chairman of the Michigan Liquor Control Commission. During World War II he was Special Assistant to the United States Director of Civil Defense and Director of the Michigan Civil Defense. He is a member of the Michigan and American Bar Associations. His present article was presented at the 71st Annual Conference of the International Association of Chiefs of Police in October, 1964, at Louisville, Kentucky.-EDITOR.

The Effectiveness of Police Youth Bureau Officers

The study reported in this article concerns a problem with not only immediate practical significance, but also with strong implications both for theory as to juvenile delinquency and for the design of programs to reduce delinquency. The study had its origin in the desire of officials of the Detroit Police Department to develop a more scientific basis for the selection of officers to be assigned to the Youth Bureau. The theoretical significance of the research derives from the fact that the major viewpoints as to cause of delinquency seem to call for remedies which require relatively intensive individual treatment or far-reaching changes in the social structure of communities. It is no secret that in the study of delinquency there tends to be emphasis as to cause which implicates either powerful social forces on the one hand or deep-seated personality difficulties on the other. In this article we shall not reopen the perennial debate between the sociologists and the psychiatrists. In passing it may be noted that as of the early 1960's a renewed interest is manifest in attempts to deal with social structure, possibly as a result of disenchantment with the effectiveness of various individual therapeutic techniques. Without discussing or forecasting future swings of the theory pendulum, it should be stressed that the essential significance of both streams of thought is that delinquency being the result of very powerful forces must be attacked by equally powerful weapons. If one accepts what might be called loosely either a psychiatric or social work approach, as these would be found in the works of such