Detroit Police Chief James Craig says Detroit's violent weekend is "fighting against our progress."
The chief made the comments during an exclusive interview with 7 Action News reporter Aaron Baskerville.
You can watch the entire interview in the video player above.
While this past weekend was the second most violent since the beginning of the year, Craig says it's bucking the trend in the city.
"We're one of the few larger cities in America, right now, that's seeing a decline in not only overall crime, but violent crime," Craig says. "As of today, we're sitting even with homicides with last year. I don't say that in saying we're successful, but we are making progress."
Craig cites as progress that, over the last two years, Detroit has seen the lowest number of murders in decades.
However, he says his officers can't be the only one's responsible for decreasing crime in the city, the public also has to take a role.
“As we continue to move forward, it is absolutely a necessity for people to say, ‘I’m in this fight and I’m not going to let the few ruin my quality of life. This is my neighborhood’,” Craig says.
He's calling on community groups to work with the police to continue the progress in the city. However, he says marches are not the answer, if marching is all that's being done.
"It looks good, we're on television, 'Stop the Violence,' 'Hands Up,' 'Don't Shoot,' but the people that need to hear that are not listening. That's the problem." Craig says. "I support the marches and I think overlaying the marches in an area that we're doing enforcement work sends a much larger message. But anytime we're out marching and there's a shooting two blocks away while we're marching, who are we sending a message too?"
"I don't want to just come in and say 'Well, we've had this situation, we're making the community aware'," Craig says. "I want to sustain it."
