(WWJ) A quadruple shooting at diner on Detroit's west side capped a particularly violent couple of days in the city.
"We have a total of 33 victims of shooting incidents; 26 were nonfatal shooting victims, and seven were fatal," Detroit Police Chief James Craig said, briefing reporters Monday afternoon. "And over the last seven days we've experienced ten homicides, and 39 nonfatal shootings."
"In terms of what our overall crime assessment is, as of today, we're up 7% in violent crime, and in property crime we are down 18%," Craig added.
There were two major incidents that fueled those weekend stats.
Craig said a 25-year-old suspect with a "violent past" is in custody in the shooting at Eagles Coney Island on Dexter near Joy, in which three people were killed.
A motive, he said, is still unclear as police investigate.
"We've gone over and over the video, and it really appears that there was a brief conversation with one of the victims,before the suspect took out a gun," Craig said. "It didn't appear that the suspect was agitated...then he started shooting. We just don't know why. Another senseless shooting."
Craig said, while she is not considered a suspect, police are still looking for a 23-year-old woman who was with the gunman when he opened fire.
In a separate incident, Saturday on the east side, four teenagers were shot and wounded.
So, what's this uptick in violence all about? The chief says numbers coming out of Chicago, New York and other major cities tell a similar story.
"In my professional judgement, a couple of things are driving the violence. Certainly, we'll start with COVID," Craid said. "Some may ask: What does COVID have to do with violence? I think a contributing factor has been the stay-at-home (order). Another factor had been the early release of individuals that had been incarcerated, because of COVID."
Craig said he'd be remiss not to mention the impact of Black Lives Matter marches and other protests over the last eight weeks.
"We've had to redeploy staffing from our neighborhood precincts to manage, you know, again, mostly peaceful protests," he said. "And then just the fact that many of these suspects feel emboldened. Some of these violent individuals feel encouraged, and...they feel like then can operate in an unsanctioned way."
On a related note, Craig said his department has been working extremely hard to get illegal guns off the streets.
Craig said the DPD has been averaging around 80 concealed weapons arrests every week. "This week was no different," the chief said. "In fact, we've seized, over the last seven days, 113 guns. We've made 172 felony arrests, and of that number, 106 were carrying a concealed weapon. So our officers have been very aggressively going out and trying to mitigate the violence."
