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Violent Crime in GR way down in 2005

GRDadof3

By GRDadof3
in Grand Rapids Coffee House

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blueman459 Unincorporated Area

blueman459

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As a couple people already said, 8 murbers in a city with near 200k people is a great thing. That makes for a lower murder rate than many suburbs and I beleive lower than the national average.

Are you sure GR has had 11 murders already? That would be hard to beleive when there were only 8 the previous year, and from the stats I've seen thats not too far out of line with GR's past numbers. Where did that number come from?

Believe me, 11 is a correct number. Gun violence in the city is on the rise. Like the news has said, 22 people shot in one small part of the city since Jan 1 and it isn't even hot out yet. This is going to be a long summer. I hate to say it but I bet the city will hit between 20-25 murders by the end of the year. Sad but true.

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hood Burg

hood

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Believe me, 11 is a correct number. Gun violence in the city is on the rise. Like the news has said, 22 people shot in one small part of the city since Jan 1 and it isn't even hot out yet. This is going to be a long summer. I hate to say it but I bet the city will hit between 20-25 murders by the end of the year. Sad but true.

Just out of curiosity, why do you think that there has been this huge fluxuation. To me it doesn't make any sense, GR as a whole seems to be doing better and better with jobs and the economy. Is it that this violence is all related? Also, how many shootings has there been in the rest of the city in the same time period?

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PBJ Burg

PBJ

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Just out of curiosity, why do you think that there has been this huge fluxuation. To me it doesn't make any sense, GR as a whole seems to be doing better and better with jobs and the economy. Is it that this violence is all related? Also, how many shootings has there been in the rest of the city in the same time period?

Judging by news around here, these may all be "related" as the city is also trying to get the local gangs to play nice. I don't know of many other shootings/stabbings outside the SE area (maybe 2 or 3 in the past 4-6 months). But that could be because they just don't report it on local news.

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GRDadof3 Ecumenopolis

GRDadof3

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Just out of curiosity, why do you think that there has been this huge fluxuation. To me it doesn't make any sense, GR as a whole seems to be doing better and better with jobs and the economy. Is it that this violence is all related? Also, how many shootings has there been in the rest of the city in the same time period?

Most of the violence has been in a 4 to 5 block area on the Southeast side I believe, which happens to be the poorest part of the city and represented heavily by minorities, and has traditionally been a high crime area. I think there are some neighborhood groups and churches in that area that are fighting tooth and nail to improve the area, but it's a long slough.

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blueman459 Unincorporated Area

blueman459

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Just out of curiosity, why do you think that there has been this huge fluxuation. To me it doesn't make any sense, GR as a whole seems to be doing better and better with jobs and the economy. Is it that this violence is all related? Also, how many shootings has there been in the rest of the city in the same time period?

Hood, back in the mid 90's there was an outbreak of street gang violence between the weallthy street boys and other rival gangs. Now for some reason 15-16 year old's have rekindled the idea of street gangs. Our main problem is the Bemis boys, Eastern Ave boys, and Madison boys. Plus there are tons of guns on the street right now. Also I dont have the info on the other shootings in the other service areas but you'd be very surprised how may actually do occur. Right now the Southeast Side is getting all the attention. You do have to give Chief Dolan some credit. The man has taken on the public in reference to the drop out rate of students. Plus in the face of extreme budget cuts and other city issues, He's done the best he can. Just to give you an idea. GRPD has lost about 55-65 officers in the last 3 years which is equivalent to about the size of Wyomings whole department. I do believe there is a correlation between our 40% drop out rate and our increased street violence. Also if anybody is ever interested, the GRPD offers a rider observer program. You can ride with an officer and actually see what happens on the street. There is also a more extensive program available to the public. It's the GRPD citizen police accademy. I believe they run 2-3 a year. If anyone has any questions feel free to PM me. Its always good to have the public see the way things REALLY are. :)

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hood Burg

hood

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Hood, back in the mid 90's there was an outbreak of street gang violence between the weallthy street boys and other rival gangs. Now for some reason 15-16 year old's have rekindled the idea of street gangs. Our main problem is the Bemis boys, Eastern Ave boys, and Madison boys. Plus there are tons of guns on the street right now. Also I dont have the info on the other shootings in the other service areas but you'd be very surprised how may actually do occur. Right now the Southeast Side is getting all the attention. You do have to give Chief Dolan some credit. The man has taken on the public in reference to the drop out rate of students. Plus in the face of extreme budget cuts and other city issues, He's done the best he can. Just to give you an idea. GRPD has lost about 55-65 officers in the last 3 years which is equivalent to about the size of Wyomings whole department. I do believe there is a correlation between our 40% drop out rate and our increased street violence. Also if anybody is ever interested, the GRPD offers a rider observer program. You can ride with an officer and actually see what happens on the street. There is also a more extensive program available to the public. It's the GRPD citizen police accademy. I believe they run 2-3 a year. If anyone has any questions feel free to PM me. Its always good to have the public see the way things REALLY are. :)

One good thing about these gangs is that they sound like they are just little local gangs. In Lansing we have had outbreaks of violence do to small local gangs before to, such as "creek," nutty boys, 517 boys ect... However when they step to far out of line and start bringing to much attention and police presence to a neighborhood, the "real" gangs have always stepped up and put a stop to this. In Lansing this is the GD (Gangster Disciples) and VL (Vice Lords). A couple years ago the "creek" was starting too much trash, and they were getting away with it, the police couldn't seem to do anything. Then all the sudden GD stepped up and started shutting "creek" down, it began with them crashing a house party a shooting a couple creek members, from then on the creek and their problems diminished to nothing quite quickly.

Didn't GR do a gun buy back program at one time? Was it successful? Can we do it again?

The last I heard the gun buy back program was state sponsered and was offered in three counties: Wayne, Ingham and Genessee. I live in Ingham but I'm not sure about how you would even go about turning a gun in, its not advertised very well.

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Phizzy Hamlet

Phizzy

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Anyone know which year was Grand Rapids' deadliest year (i.e. most murders)?

I ask because someone claimed that Grand Rapids had an extreme number of murders in 1992 or 1993, so much so that it was the "murder capital" of the United States. For some reason, although I don't get the connection, the spike in murders had something to do with the Rodney King situation.

(The FBI Uniform Crime Reports only go back to 1995.)

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Rizzo City

Rizzo

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That is ridiculous -- to go that far as to label the city "Murder Capital" of the United States.

The only place I know that had the numbers for that far back is GRPD. I think also that a local not-profit for social justice in the inner city put out a newpaper insert packet with tons of statistics for the City of Grand Rapids and the surrounding suburbs. One of which was a graph representing murders and violent crime from the early 80s to present. Hope that can help.

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AlexPKeaton Burg

AlexPKeaton

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It's interesting to compare GR's numbers to cities like Detroit and Baltimore. I'm not sure where else to mention this, but does anybody else watch The Wire on HBO? For my money it's the best show on TV, period. It really goes into depth on the urban drug and violence problems, along with some other themes and social commentary. It takes a little while to get into it but it's well worth it!

-nb

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gvsusean Burg

gvsusean

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It's interesting to compare GR's numbers to cities like Detroit and Baltimore. I'm not sure where else to mention this, but does anybody else watch The Wire on HBO? For my money it's the best show on TV, period. It really goes into depth on the urban drug and violence problems, along with some other themes and social commentary. It takes a little while to get into it but it's well worth it!

-nb

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GR8scott Burg

GR8scott

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Its interesting that 3 of the 100 most violent cities per capita in the counrty are here in WEST MI and that would be Muskegon Hights, Benton Harbor, both only about 10k ppl, Battle creek is also on there at 99th

But even in GRs high murder rate days of 33 that is comparable to say Dayton and Hartford and always less than other cities like Rochester NY an otherwise nice city. Interesting Richmond Va pop. 193,777 had murder totals between 72-93 from '99-'04, and a lot of other comparable cities in the south had high murder rates

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