Homicides up, total crime down: DPD Chief James Craig talks stats during pandemic

DETROIT (FOX 2) - "Right now we have 99 officers, sworn and civilian that are quarantined," Chief James Craig said. "At one point when you look at when we started quarantining officers it was up over 1,000."

 Progress within the Detroit Police Department. Craig himself, is one of the department members who contracted and battled coronavirus. He is now back at the helm, setting his sights on better days ahead but warmer days - which brings new challenges.

"There is a small faction, a younger group, that defied the governor's directives, certainly defied what we wanted and we went out in mass and issued a number of $1000 tickets," he said. "We impounded a number of vehicles so the message is very clear, we will not tolerate it."

Craig says his officers are ready for anything, like making sure felons know they're not relaxing efforts right nab the bad guys because of coronavirus.

Homicides in the last six weeks are up slightly. 

"When you look at 2019 and 2020, we are seeing it with five up, same period," he said. "Non-fatal shootings are a little different. We have had 43 incidents which is not where we want to be but when you look at our overall part one crime, it's really amazing to see the dramatic decreases as we have seen."

During the pandemic, domestic violence cases, while people are cooped up together, are down in Detroit.  

FOX 2: "Chief, looking at these numbers, more than 10 percent drop in domestic cases."

"A 28-day period, that we were down 12 percent in domestics and frankly I would've thought given the stay at home that we might have seen an increase but we've actually seen a decrease," he said.