When staff writers Cameron Pugh and Sara Miller Llana began thinking about a story on Detroit’s renewal, it seemed natural to focus on its falling crime rates.
Detroit has always been among the most violent big cities in the United States, and it still is. But as violent crime continues to drop in this city, it’s part of a larger story about America.
Since the early 1990s, violent crime in the United States has fallen dramatically. There were about 750 violent crimes per 100,000 people in 1993, according to FBI statistics. In 2024, there were 359. The U.S. homicide rate spiked significantly during the pandemic, but in 2024, it was half of what it was in 1993.
Although some U.S. cities, such as Milwaukee and Little Rock, Arkansas, have seen violent crime increase recently, it has been falling significantly in major U.S. cities since 2022, according to a recent study by the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank.
But it doesn’t feel that way to many people. In 2024, a Gallup poll found that 56% of Americans said the U.S. crime problem was extremely or very serious. That number was down from the prior year’s record high of 63%, but also masked significant partisan differences. The majority of Democrats – 60% – told pollsters crime had decreased over the past year. Ninety percent of Republicans believed it had increased.
The Trump administration has said it will continue to deploy the National Guard to cities, as it has already done in Portland, Oregon; Chicago; and Washington, D.C., in part to help counter what it has described as a violent crime wave.
Cameron and Sara wanted to explore how all of this was playing out in Detroit – and what it meant to people up close, beneath the political rhetoric.
They explored how city and civic leaders have helped revitalize Detroit’s downtown, where automakers and other companies have been behind billions in new investment.
But they also wanted to report on how people who have lived here for decades have been part of Detroit’s ongoing renewal efforts.
There are serious questions about how much of the investment in the 7.2 square miles of Detroit’s newly developed downtown will affect the entire 139 square miles of the city, Cameron notes. There can be racial overtones to the “comeback” – a term some residents dislike. The city’s population is more than 75% Black. Much of the downtown caters to a white and out-of-town population.
But Cameron and Sara found communities across the city fully engaged in Detroit’s self-improvement. While serious problems remain, they found individuals building connections and helping each other in a way that meant more than either statistics or political rhetoric.
As Cameron says, “I was touched by how these communities saw themselves, and their stories, as part of the larger story of Detroit.”
