Chief James Craig Talks City Hall Evacuation and Policing in Detroit
How effective has community policing been in Detroit under Chief Craig?
Detroit Police Chief James Craig addresses Monday’s city hall security breach and discusses community policing with Stephen Henderson on Detroit Today.
Craig addressed the security breach by saying that there was a “total absence of communication.” He explained that, “Clearly the suspect got out of the location…I’d rather err on the side of safety… While it was a disruption it was a great training exercise too. It gives us the opportunity to evaluate our practices.”
Craig says that they are meeting later today to discuss the security breach.
He also talks about the idea of community policing and how the police can work better with the people they’re serving.
Craig says that while crime such as carjackings have continued on a downward trend, some of the recent “desensitized approaches to crime” targeting children and the elderly is the result of a cultural problem in Detroit. “Many of these young men engaged in violence, they don’t know what love is,” says Craig.
He describes one of the recent youth initiatives that he began to engage the community. “We have a CITI camp, children in trauma intervention camp, where we’re focusing it on middle school aged children because we know that these children, some of them, are traumatized with the level of violence that they’ve seen in their homes and their neighborhoods…if left unchecked we’re creating violent criminals later.”
Click on the audio link above to hear the entire conversation.
