One Detroit Mission Statment

One Detroit is the United States Attorney’s Office’s comprehensive violence reduction initiative that links evidenced-based strategies with a coalition of stakeholders in the community, government, and law enforcement. The core of the initiative is partnership. The One Detroit partners commit to reducing violence while fostering legitimacy through engagement, coordination, and action.

Urban violence is not new to Detroit; nor is law enforcement’s effort to reduce it. In 2013, a coalition of law enforcement and community partners announced the Detroit One initiative. That initiative was designed to combat violent crime and had a measurable impact on violence in Detroit. Since then, we have continued to learn how violence impacts our community and we have developed a better understanding of how to address it. We have learned that urban violence is often perpetrated in clusters by a small number of people and groups, and we can be most effective if we focus on these few violent people. We have learned that responses to violence can be overbroad and negatively affect community relationships. Most importantly, we have learned that violence is best addressed together, as one community, as One Detroit.

The One Detroit partnership is an effort to reinvigorate the Detroit One initiative. The One Detroit partners will, again, commit themselves to reducing violent crime. But we will attack this problem using what we have learned since 2013. Our efforts will coalesce around three principles: focus, balance, and fairness1. By focusing law enforcement resources on the people, groups, and places most likely to be involved in violent crime, we will precisely address violence that is happening right now. By balancing those law enforcement strategies with prevention and outreach, we will deter future violence. And by being transparent about our work and its outcomes,

we hope our community will commit to this effort with a renewed confidence in the fairness of our approach.

Focus

A disproportionate amount of violence is driven by a small number of individuals and groups. The One Detroit partnership will work collaboratively to focus its law enforcement efforts on the relatively few individuals and groups inflicting the most violence, rather than the entire community. The steps described here are designed to address the actual drivers of violence.

Identify

The One Detroit partnership will involve close coordination between federal and local law enforcement to identify emerging violent offenders or trends within particular neighborhoods. We will draw on the expertise of local officers, who have deep experience in the communities they serve. And we will pair that personalized knowledge with technology like the National Integrated Ballistics Identification Network (NIBIN) and Shot Spotter, and evidence-based tools like Gunstat. By implementing this data driven and intelligence-led approach, law enforcement will focus on the small number of people perpetrating violence.

Investigate

Once the most violent people, groups, and places are identified, the One Detroit law enforcement partners will work together to develop strategies to investigate and—when appropriate—prosecute the offender. Prosecutors will work closely and directly with their federal and local law enforcement partners to help shape investigative strategies. Often this will involve a review of past police reports and contacts to determine if completed investigations can be quickly charged to prevent more violence. And in the right circumstances, short- and long-term proactive investigations of violent people and groups will be initiated.

Prosecutors and investigators will work with urgency to disrupt cycles of violence. Violent offenders will face aggressive prosecution strategies designed to protect the community and hold them accountable. This will involve the use of traditional statutes, like RICO and conspiracy, and non- traditional statutes, like fraud and identity theft. And because these cases will focus on those who are actively engaged in violence, federal and local prosecutors will coordinate quickly to determine the most effective venue for prosecution.

Balance

We approach our anti-violence work with a deeper recognition of the collateral impacts that often accompany aggressive law enforcement efforts. We are committed to balancing our investigative and prosecutive efforts with outreach strategies designed to prevent violent crime from happening. The One Detroit partnership will develop and foster meaningful community relationships, promote prevention and intervention programs, and emphasize prisoner reentry programs that involve the community.

The One Detroit partnership includes diverse community groups from the neighborhoods most impacted by violence and in which our enforcement strategies are most often directed. The partnership includes community members, faith leaders, law enforcement, and representatives from intervention/outreach organizations. Through open dialogue with these partners, we will better understand the underlying causes of violent crime in the community and collaborate to develop comprehensive solutions to address them.

We will coordinate with social scientists and other stakeholders to implement evidence-based violence reduction strategies. By working with groups like Ceasefire—which directly communicates a deterrence message and offers social services—we will provide would-be shooters with alternatives to violence. And city leadership and other stakeholders will work to address the environmental conditions that contribute to violence.