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Mayor Mike Duggan on Monday
Behind the backdrop of local, state, and federal law enforcement officials and politicians, Mayor Mike Duggan on Monday announced a drop in homicides and carjackings in the first three quarters of 2025 compared to last year, as he touted a change in culture among law enforcement and Detroit residents.
The press conference, held at police headquarters and streamed on social media, took place just hours after a teenager was killed and another wounded in a drive-by shooting at Shaefer Highway and W. Chicago on Oct. 6 at around 7:30 a.m.
"This morning we had a teenager killed and another one shot," said Duggan, who is finishing up his final term in December and is running for governor as an Independant. "We had our 133rd homicide victim of the year, and while that's dramatically lower than we have seen, every single one is a painful loss of a member of this community."
Duggan said carjackings from January through September 2025 dropped 29 percent compared to the year before, going from 90 to 64. Since 2022, carjackings are down 67 percent.
Homicides dropped 15 percent in the third quarter this year compared to last year, going from 155 to 132, according to Detroit Police figures. During the same stretch in 2022, there were 223 homicides.
Duggan also said that through coordination among different agencies, authorities were able to clear a backlog of criminal cases that had built up during COVID, which also helped reduce crime.
He said when he first took office, the police solved too few shootings and homicide cases.
"When I started as mayor, we had a homicide clearance rate of less than 30 percent," Duggan said. "We had a non-fatal shooting clearance rate of 15 percent. And you think about that—five out of six people who shot somebody got away with it, and we were saying to the community that we don't value life when five out of six aren't investigated and caught.
"But what you have seen over the years is that all of these groups pulled together, and now the chief is running clearance rates well above 60 percent in all of those categories," Duggan said.
Police Chief Todd Bettison said the reductions were due to collaboration with other agencies and politicians, and he pointed out that non-fatal shootings had dropped from 727 in 2022 to 366 in 2025.
"The men and women of the Detroit Police Department and this collaborative partnership that we have are paying off, and we're going to continue because we're not waving the flag of success," Bettison said at the press conference. "There's much work to do, but the strategies that we are implementing are working, and we're not going to stop."
