Mayor, Detroit Police chief praise Occupy the Summer for drop in crime

Juvenile crime significantly dropped this summer in Detroit, along with overall crime, and city officials are citing the mayor’s Occupy the Summer initiative as a source of curbing violence.

Mayor Mary Sheffield and Detroit Police Chief Todd Bettison touted overall crime reduction during summer this year compared to last year.

From June to August, homicides dropped 25% and juvenile homicides were down by 89%, Sheffield said on Monday, Oct. 5, at the Adams Butzel Complex, where she kicked off Occupy the Summer in June. Juvenile non-fatal shootings have also dropped by 22% and carjackings went down by nearly 35%, officials said. Sheffield’s office launched a summer safety plan, which included a safe gun storage effort, engagement with young people and the summerlong program of activities.

Occupy the Summer “was a historic $1.5 million investment in our young people … and I want to state that occupy the summer was not a reactive approach to teen takeovers. It was a proactive approach that we have been doing in the city for 12 years, when I started on Detroit City Council,” Sheffield said. “And it is our way of saying that we cannot police our way out of crime, but we have to invest and support and provide opportunity for our young people.”

Sheffield said there is more work to do, however.

Bettison said summer 2025 was “a rough summer” due to several homicides of young people. He credited Sheffield’s Occupy the Summer for paying “tremendous dividends” to bring down homicides and he believes the investment in the 10-week program made a difference.

In the summer months, “we have only had one homicide of an individual that is considered a child. Last year, last summer, we had nine. That is an 89% decrease,” Bettison said.

Officials were focused on enforcing curfews this summer, particularly after a “teen takeover” group swarmed downtown in April for a day of what a group of friends intended to be a meetup to eat and hang out on a warm day. In response, Sheffield created a mayoral youth council to devise ideas for teens. This summer, DPD issued 85 juvenile curfew violations, a 28% increase compared to last year, and 44 parental responsibility citations, a 25% decrease from last year.

“A guardian or parent, if they have more than one (child), we’re not going to give them a citation for a parental responsibility for each one of their kids,” Bettison told reporters. “There are incidents where that’s going to be not the same as the number of the curfew violations. It’s not going to match up evenly with parental responsibility. And there are also situations where the parent will have a legitimate excuse as to why the kid was out on curfew, and with officer discretion, if they choose that that is a determination, then a parental responsibility citation will not be given, but the curfew can still stand.”

Bettison highlighted several areas of reduction from June to August, including a drop in homicides, aggravated assault, robbery, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, non-fatal shootings and carjackings. Sexual assaults were up 5.8%. However, Bettison said the city is “trending in the right direction” overall.

The city is also on track to lowering carjackings. In 2013, Detroit was known as “carjack city” with a whopping 800 carjackings. Bettison credited the department being “innovative” in addressing them, including the use of Project Greenlight, to collect surveillance footage from local business partners to solve crimes. In 2025, the city closed out with 77 carjackings, and Bettison said the city is on track to receive even fewer cases this year.

Teferi Brent, the city’s neighborhood and community safety director, said his department is working to address a variety of crimes and boost community violence intervention.

Brent said the city is witnessing “reductions in homicide and non-fatal shootings, alongside reductions across every major crime category … those numbers represent Detroiters who made it home, families that don’t have to plan a funeral, mothers who did not have to bury their child, children who will still have their fathers and mothers to come home to, neighborhoods that are beginning to experience peace instead of trauma.”

Dana Afana is the Detroit City Hall reporter for the Free Press. Contact: [email protected]. Follow her: @DanaAfana.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Mayor, Detroit Police chief praise Occupy the Summer for drop in crime

Reporting by Dana Afana, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press

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This story was originally published October 5, 2026 at 3:29 PM.