https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lARWV1-Guz4
A Detroit man is now free after spending exactly 27 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit.
Roy Blackmon was released from a state correctional facility in Ionia on Tuesday, after a judge agreed to vacate his convictions from a 1998 murder. His lawyers with the University of Michigan Law School's Innocence Clinic say his convictions rested solely on the testimony of witnesses who were coerced into implicating him by Detroit police officers at the time...
They include a department devoted to addressing violence without police involvement…
The mayor also announced that starting Wednesday, all students at Detroit's public and charter K-12 schools can ride city buses for free with a student ID. And she issued a challenge to Detroit's corporate leaders and employers: "If Detroit can pay its workers a living wage, you can too." (Sheffield recently signed an executive order meant to jumpstart the process of ensuring every city worker meets a minimum income threshold).
And she says that Detroit is now the largest city in the country participating in the Rx Kids program. So far, the program has approved over 1,200 applications, and distributed $1.6 million in cash assistance to Detroit mothers and infants, or people who are expecting a new baby.
"There is a prairie that we installed. So that has about 90 different species of native grasses and forbs and flowers. And then there are about 40 different species of trees on this site. About 200 were planted," she said...
The highest nationwide estimate puts U.S. fraud losses at $521 billion.
Even if all of that could be recouped, it would amount to less than a third of the 2025 deficit of $1.775 trillion...
Detroit's 2025 homicide rate is a significant drop. This is the first time in decades that the number of reported homicides has dropped below 200...
A 15-year quest ends with a monument, drawing crowds and nostalgia as Detroit embraces its cult-film past…
This is related to the depth of social and economic inequalities that Detroit families face. Compared to other major cities, Detroit has higher rates of poverty, unemployment and crime. It has worse public health conditions. And even its winters are some of the coldest of major U.S. cities. All of these factors make it harder for kids to attend school.
Rates of chronic absenteeism spiked in Detroit during the COVID-19 pandemic, as they did statewide. The Detroit Public Schools Community District has come close to returning to its pre-pandemic levels of absenteeism. The rates were 66% in the 2023-24 school year compared to 62% in the school year right before the pandemic began, 2018-19…
…we need to recognize that chronic absenteeism is not a problem that schools can solve alone. While educators work to improve conditions within schools, policymakers and community leaders can take responsibility for the broader factors that influence attendance.
This could look like investing more resources and fostering collaboration across sectors such as health care, housing, transportation and social services to better support students and their families. Community organizations can play a role too, offering wraparound services such as mental health care, access to transportation, and after-school programming, all of which can support families. In the meantime, educators can focus on what they can control: strengthening communication with families, building supportive relationships and helping families connect with existing services that can remove attendance barriers…