White House Official Praises Detroit PD for Using Rescue Plan Act to Curb Crime

The White House’s top domestic policy official touted Detroit’s Police Department as a national model in using American Rescue Plan Act funds on tools to reduce crime, and city leaders say the investments contributed to a decrease in violent crime.

Domestic Policy Advisor Neera Tanden visited police headquarters Wednesday to see a helicopter and scout cars purchased by the department, as well as its Real Time Crime Center. During a tour of the equipment with Tanden, Chief James White said the vehicles are used by the department’s code enforcement team and civilian employees who respond to low-level, “quality of life”-focused calls for service and have the ability to write some citations.

The Real Time Crime Center allows the department to monitor live intelligence such as information from ShotSpotter, a gunshot detection system used in some areas of Detroit, and surveillance footage from Project Green Light, which is a partnership with private businesses and residential building owners.

“Detroit has really led the way in effectively using those dollars,” Tanden said during a press briefing Wednesday. She said the Real Time Crime Center is “doing really cutting edge work … to ensure that the DPD has the best-trained police force in the country.”

Detroit has spent about $28.2 million of the $48.8 million in ARPA funds it received for public safety, according to a dashboard on the city’s website.

Mayor Mike Duggan said during the press conference that in 2023 the city had its lowest recorded number of homicides, 252, since 1966.

He pointed to the use of newly installed cameras on freeways to capture drive-by shootings when guilty committed shootings out of reach of city surveillance cameras. Duggan also said the Police Department has begun using its helicopter to track and stop illegal racing as an alternative to dangerous high-speed chases to apprehend drivers. Drag racing and “drifting” declined markedly from two summers ago as a result, he said.

“This last summer, you saw very little. We change behavior by tactics,” Duggan said.

Metrics that serve as indicators of crime, however, tend to be inexact measures of actual crimes. Sources of data such as calls for service, arrests and police reports are influenced by a variety of factors other than the actual numbers of crimes committed, such as policing resources, priorities and willingness to report crime.

White said the department looks at “a little bit of all of it” to understand what appears to be happening with crime.

“We know that if we use the data to tell us where we need to be at a particular time, we have a higher degree of success that allows us to get deployment in place that could potentially change behavior,” White said. “We don’t have to make the arrest, but we look at the data daily.”

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