Under funding from Detroit Public Safety Foundation, Ceasefire Detroit is active in two districts under National Network advising. Ceasefire Detroit launched with a call-in during summer 2013. With the project direction of Saul Green, former deputy mayor of Detroit and current Senior Counsel at Miller Canfield, the city's partnership has continued conducting call-ins and enhancing the law enforcement, community moral voice, and help components of the strategy since then.
In this opinion piece for the New York Times, Tina Rosenberg highlights the NNSC's group violence prevention work across jurisdictions.
In Pittsburgh, homicides hit a 12-year low in 2017; the mayor credited Ceasefire. Detroit’s homicide rate hit a 50-year low in 2017. Its police chief, James Craig, said in an interview that the city had started Ceasefire in two high-crime precincts in 2015 and has gradually expanded it. “I wasn’t much of a believer when I first got to Detroit,” he said. “But what we have in place now is probably one of the better-working Ceasefire models. It has had a profound impact on sustaining violent crime reduction.”
In Newburgh, statistics in a voluminous New York State report show shootings are way down (See pdf, page 1202) — from 55 victims in 2015 to 17 last year. Violent crime, especially firearm crime, has plummeted. In 2012, the year Oakland began its current version of Ceasefire, it was the third-most dangerous American city, with 126 murders. Last year it had 74. In 2017, Oakland had 277 nonfatal shootings — down from 557 in 2012.
In 2017, Michigan's biggest city posted its lowest tally of criminal homicides in more than a half-century: 267, Detroit Police Chief James Craig confirmed Monday. The program city leaders cite as a factor in falling crime is the expansion of Operation Ceasefire. Craig said he expects to roll out that program citywide by March. It’s currently operating on the east side and in the 6th Precinct on the west side. "We have got the most advanced system of crime intelligence that the police department has ever had," Duggan said. "They are able to pull data instantly; if a shooting happens at 2 a.m, we have the ability to pull data and have a really good idea which groups are involved and be out the next day responding."
"Ray Winans, once affectionately known as “Killer Ray,” is helping reduce gun violence in Detroit — one gang member at a time. The 37-year-old former gang member is an unconventional activist who mediates among gangs, police and federal prosecutors while encouraging young Black men to end their lives of crime and hand their guns over to officials."
Prior to his return to the department a year ago, Police Chief James Craig began his career in law enforcement in Detroit in 1977 and has since then served in Los Angeles and Cincinnati. "We need to drive the message. We need to tell the story. We need to talk about our crime reduction efforts. We need to talk about the community’s perception,” Craig said.
Craig Fahle speaks with Saul Green, former Detroit Deputy Mayor and Director of Ceasefire Detroit, responsible for implementing and overseeing the results of the program in Detroit.
Detroit Ceasefire offers new tactics against gangs and violence
