Detroit ― The city recorded 252 homicides last year — its lowest total since 1966 — while nonfatal shootings declined for the fourth straight year, according to preliminary statistics released Monday by Detroit police.

Overall, violent crime in Detroit fell 1.6% from 2022-23, with carjackings dropping 33.5% to a level unseen since the term "carjacking" was coined by The Detroit News in 1991. But property crime in Michigan's largest city rose 1.7% in 2023 over the previous year, driven partly by an 8% increase in larcenies, Detroit Police Department statistics show. Motor vehicle thefts dropped 4%.

"Effective data-based strategy, the hard work of the best police officers in the country and collaboration with our partners has resulted in historic reductions in crime, including a 57-year low in homicides," Detroit police said in a statement Monday.

The decline in Detroit homicides comes as the United States saw a 13% drop in killings from 2022-23, the largest decline on record, according to preliminary data from law enforcement agencies compiled by AH Datalytics. The national decrease follows a 30% increase in homicides in the United States from 2020-21 — the sharpest rise on record, according to the National Center on Health Statistics.

Flint in 2023 was on track to record an 11.8% drop in homicides while homicides in Grand Rapids dropped from 21 in 2022 to 20 in 2023, according to the departments' online data.

Other large cities recording drops in homicides in 2023 include Atlanta (22%), Baltimore (22%), Chicago (12.5%), Houston (20%), Los Angeles (15%), New York (11%) and Philadelphia (24%). Several cities that saw drops in 2023, however, had seen homicides spike to record levels during the previous three years.

Detroit's population in 1960 was 1.67 million — more than double the 639,111 counted in 2020, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures. The homicide rate per 100,000 people in 1966 was 12.8 based on the 1960 population, whereas 252 killings with the current population is a rate of 39.4.

In 2012, Detroit's homicide rate hit a 20-year high of about 54.6, roughly the same as in 1974, when the recorded 714 homicides and became known as the “Murder Capital of the World.” Last year, New Orleans had the nation's highest murder rate, with about 52 homicides per 100,000 residents, according to the New Orleans’ Metropolitan Crime Commission.

Detroit police data shows that nonfatal shootings in the city dropped from 955 in 2022 to 804 in 2023. There were 1,055 nonfatal shootings in 2021 and 1,170 in 2020.

Last year, there were 167 carjackings in Detroit, according to DPD data — roughly 100 fewer than the 250 victims The News chronicled during the month of July 1991, according to an August 1991 two-part series that's credited with coining the term "carjackings."

After Detroit police began tracking carjackings in the early 1990s, the city regularly recorded more than 1,000 carjackings per year from the 1990s-2000s, with a high of 1,231 in 2008, according to Detroit police statistics and Detroit News archives.

In 2022, there was a 21% spike in carjackings over the previous year that Police Chief James White said was caused by "Young people ... trying to quickly get money, (and) not understanding what they're doing."

Shelrita Wilson, 60, said she feels safer than she has in years in her neighborhood near 7 Mile and Schoenherr in Detroit's "Red Zone," where she said she's witnessed carjackings and shootings outside her house.

"We have a lot more police activity in the area than there used to be," Wilson said. "They're trying to clean up the Red Zone. I'm glad to see it."

The 9th Precinct, which covers the Red Zone, saw carjackings drop from 28 in 2022 to 19 last year, according to DPD statistics.

The 12th Precinct saw the steepest drop in carjackings, from 25 in 2022 to 9 in 2023, a 64% decline. The 12th Precinct also had the largest decline in homicides last year, from 34 in 2022 to 19 in 2023, a 44% drop.

"Those statistics are because the community engages with the police," said Ken Scott, a vice president of the 12th Precinct Police Community Relations Committee. "We have a good relationship with the police; we hold weekly meetings where people can let the police know what issues they're having so they can be addressed."

Crime-fighting initiatives launched in 2023 included the One Detroit Violence Reduction Partnership's "summer surge" program, a partnership between local and local law enforcement agencies that targeted two of Detroit's most violent neighborhoods between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Those areas — the 8th and 9th precincts — experienced double-digit drops in carjackings, robberies and gun crimes, officials said.

After a bloody weekend in April that included six shootings downtown, White announced a 12-point crime-fighting plan. When the initiative was announced April 20, there had already been four homicides committed downtown in 2023, matching the previous year's total. There were no more homicides downtown for the rest of the summer, according to Detroit Police Department statistics.

During a press conference in early December, Detroit Mayor Michael Duggan, Wayne County Executive Warren Evans and other officials attributed the 2023 drop in homicides to a program they started two years ago to clear Wayne County's backlogged court docket.

"This is a day we've been waiting for for a long time," Duggan said at the press conference. "We were making significant progress (reducing violent crime) before COVID, then all across America, violence soared. ... We know why: The criminal courts shut down. You couldn't put 12 jurors in one room. Also, it was hard to hire police officers."

Northwest Detroit resident LaTrece Cash said she feels safer than she once did in her northwest Detroit neighborhood, although she said crime statistics don't accurately reflect all crimes in the city.

"It's a complicated thing," said Cash, 56. "If people don't report crimes, then it's probably higher for some of the crimes than the statistics show, but overall, I feel like the city is getting better. Detroit is what you want it to be; if you want to get in trouble, it's there, but if you make good choices, you can prosper."

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