Charlie LeDuff reports on the tragic death of a seven year old during a SWAT raid in Detroit. There is much to excerpt, but here's a glimpse at crime in the city more generally:
While other American metropolises have gotten control of their murder rate, Detroit's remains where it was during the crack epidemic. ... To avoid the embarrassment of being the nation's perpetual murder capital, the police department took to cooking the homicide statistics, reclassifying murders as other crimes or incidents. For instance, in 2008 a man was shot in the head. ME Schmidt ruled it a homicide; the police decided it was a suicide. That year, the police said there were 306 homicidesuntil I began digging. The number was actually 375. I also found that the police and judicial systems were so broken that in more than 70 percent of murders, the killer got away with it. In Los Angeles, by comparison, the unsolved-murder rate is 22 percent.