Please disable your Ad Blocker to better interact with this website.

News Clash

‘We’ve Lost Respect for Life’: Detroit Records Deadliest Year in Decades

Screen Shot 2013-02-21 at 9.43.57 AMThe homicide rate in the city of Detroit continued a grim upward trend in 2012, hitting its highest peak in nearly two decades, officials said Thursday.

A dwindling population — 706,585 people in 2011, according to the U.S. Census estimate — and the rise in homicides combined to make Detroit’s murder rate among the highest in the nation, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing and Police Chief Chester Logan announced at a press conference.

“We’ve just lost respect for each other; we’ve lost respect for life,” Bing said. “I don’t want to say that you can forget about this generation or the generation before us, but if we’re going to solve the problem, we’ve got to get into the heads and the minds and the hearts of our young people, and it’s going to take all of us to do that.”

Detroit’s total of 411 homicides in 2012, up from 377 the previous year, includes 386 criminal homicides and 25 “justifiable homicides” that included three shootings by police, according to numbers released by the city. The number of criminal homicides increased 12 percent from 344 in 2011. The total in 2010 was 308.

Read more: usnews.nbcnews.com