Church leaders: Stop ‘summer of killing’ in Detroit
By Katrease Stafford, Detroit Free Press 10:51 p.m. EDT July 1, 2015
In response to a crime wave that has swept across Detroit in recent weeks, several faith leaders united Wednesday morning to issue a plea to the community: It’s time to stand up and speak up.
“It’s not snitching to talk about something that is pervading in our communities,” said the Rev. Eddie Connor Jr. of Open Door Ministries International. “Especially to those young people who may have information, this has to stop. The countless killings. The lives being lost continually. We can’t have a summer of killing … we can’t have a summer where we’re burying or having these young lives being exterminated.”
The pastors joined together at the Greater Quinn AME Church in Detroit as part of the Project Good Samaritan, the faith-based program of Crime Stoppers of Michigan.
Over the course of the June 20-21 weekend, 27 people were shot in the city and three people died. That weekend at a neighborhood party at a community basketball court on the west side, 12 people were shot, one of them killed.
The violence continued this past weekend.
Between 6 p.m. Friday and 6 a.m. Monday, there were 10 homicides and 20 non-fatal shootings, according to police.
Five people, including a 14-year-old, were injured in a shooting at a party at a car wash near Gratiot and Whithorn, late Sunday. And on Saturday, four others were shot and injured in a party in the area of Conner and Shoemaker.
No arrests have been made in any of those cases, police said. Detroit Police Chief James Craig has called those responsible for the crime “urban terrorists who are committing these senseless acts of violence.”
Enough is enough, according to E.L. Branch, senior pastor of Third New Hope Baptist Church in Detroit.
“When something happens in our community, somebody knows something,” Branch said. “Do not fear retaliation. If you won’t make that call for your own sake, make it for the sake of the families who are still suffering, who have lost loved ones during this crime wave. … Do it for the community at large because unless we say something, unless we do something, this crime wave will continue. Our police department can only do so much.”
Father Norman Thomas of the Sacred Heart Church said silence and loyalty can sometimes be a wonderful thing, but in this instance, the community must come forward with information. Thomas echoed sentiments that a “no snitch” culture must cease to exist.
“Silence today in the kinds of violence that we see and loyalty are really a betrayal of the trust in the community to the people of the city of Detroit,” Thomas said. “The common good is the value that supersedes all other things. So when we witness our brothers and sisters who decide to settle arguments, who take revenge against other people by killing them, we have to stand up and speak out. We hope that those who are witnesses to these kinds of things will be able to say, ‘My loyalty is to all the people, my silence is intolerable, I’ve got to do something.’”
Two arrests were made earlier this week in connection to two separate shootings in Greektown earlier this month that left one man dead and two others injured. Detroit Police were able to make the arrests after receiving tips from the public. According to the faith leaders and John Broad, Crime Stoppers of Michigan president, that’s the sort of action that
is needed from the community.
Broad said last year his organization helped solve 26 homicides, 20 of which were in Detroit and six in the suburbs. Broad said Crime Stoppers of Michigan, which is the second-largest Crime Stoppers in the country, received almost 7,000 tips from the public last year. That was a sizable increase, Broad said, from the previous year when they received about 5,800 tips.
Broad said it’s time to end the “spiraling wave of violence that has placed this community in stranglehold.”
“It’s this constant parade of families who are grieving, who lost their family members,” Broad said. “We have to do everything we can to turn this around.”
For Patrice Young, it’s personal. Young’s 29-year-old brother was shot and killed in 2006 on Linwood. A tip Crime Stoppers received from the public led to the arrest and sentencing of her brother’s killer.
“The call, it really makes a difference,” Young said. “I’m living proof that it gives you hope. This? It gives people hope.”
Anyone with information related to a crime is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-SPEAK-UP.
Contact Katrease Stafford: kstafford@freepress.com.