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The city of Detroit might have shed the infamous title of Murder City USA but indiscriminate killings continue to plague the city. Sadly, over 6,000 people have been killed since 1990. In fact in 2004, Detroiters murdered Detroiters at a rate of about one per day.
In some parts of Detroit death by a bullet or a knife is commonplace. People ask, "Why is this city slowly killing itself? Why is the culture of guns and violence so accepted that people aren’t angry anymore?”
Newspapers and local TV rarely answer those questions, they only provide briefs or 30-second spots unless the murder was brutal or involved an innocent child caught in the crossfire.
When Jeff Seidel and I started this project in May of last year we both knew going in we would not be able to come up with the answers. We wanted to show our readers the effect a little movement of a finger on a trigger has on so many people. With “Homicide in Detroit: Echoes of Violence,” we wanted to show our readers something they had never seen before.
We did that by telling the story of Emyshia Trapp, one of eight kids sitting on a couch winding down for bedtime when three stray bullets came through the window narrowly missing their heads. The sounds forced them quickly to the ground, crawling army style on their bellies towards the basement while screaming in fear. Sleeping later that night at a relative’s house, Trapp was so afraid to leave her bed to use the bathroom she wet herself.
We also told the story of Vernita Robbs; a worried aunt who sought closure in the disappearance of her nephew whom she felt in her heart was dead. Without a body the homicide department could not make any arrests, so Robbs became her own detective. Using tips on his whereabouts, Robbs spent weekends with other family members digging in abandoned areas of Detroit sometimes using a metal detector to look for him, as Dwan had a large metal rod in his right leg from a car accident.
One such tip was that Dwan was buried under a porch. Jeff and I were afraid it was a setup, that Dwan’s killer wanted Robbs and the others out in the open to kill them in a drive by shooting. As I sat on my knees under the porch photographing the family digging I realized I too was out in the open I said to Jeff who was nearby taking notes, “Watch my back!”
Later, the family pulled out guns and broke into the house to look for evidence. Jeff overheard one of the family members make a strange comment.
"Maybe it's time to kidnap somebody."
Jeff wrote: “It's hard to tell whether he's joking about it. Of course, that would be against the law but in their eyes -- in that moment of hopelessness, after you have smelled the dead dogs and your back is sweaty from digging, trying to find a rotting corpse; and it doesn't seem like the cops can help; and your life has been sucked into a world where the rules are different, it seems the only answer to end the violence is the threat of more violence, the idea of staging a kidnapping-- it starts to sound perfectly natural, the only option left.”
Nowadays Robbs does not look for Dwan as frequent as she use too and she’s resigned herself to the fact that he might never be found.
Jeff and I were able to do these and other stories by in a sense becoming embedded with the members of the Detroit Police Homicide Section. Many of the detectives were skeptical of us wondering what our true motives were but after a few weeks of hanging out with them at all kinds of hours, going on runs, having fried fish dinners (which is a typical meal for a detective) they slowly warmed up to us and word started to spread through the department that “Jeff and Eric, their good people.” I think it also helped a couple of times when I backed off and did not shoot when a detective was talking to his snitch in the back of a party store or when Jeff turned off his tape recorder when he felt it was the right time or circumstance. But we both knew we crossed over into their comfort zone when they started to joke around with us during the quiet times or when they brought their cameras in for me to show them how to use them.
With this big body of work we struggled with this series because of several factors. Most of our readership lives in the suburbs and we were afraid that some would dismiss the violence as a “Detroit Problem” – the exact opposite of our point and we were afraid of being accused of glorifying the violence. In many meetings with our editors, we anguished and argued over every detail.
What story should start the series?
Where should it end?
We decided not run the 6 stories on consecutive days because we thought it would be too much for the readers to digest, so we spaced them out over a two-week period. On Day 1 we ran a Question and Answer box about the series, trying to explain why we were doing it, how we chose the stories and ways for readers to respond. We continued that box throughout the series. We wanted to start a discussion on violence in Detroit.
On that first day, single-copy sales surged more than 9,000 copies. Hundreds of phone calls, emails and letters to the editor poured into the paper. Readers offered their solutions to fight the soaring murder rate in Detroit. Others asked what they could do to help the youth of the city.
People were talking about violence again, trying to find solutions, that is one of the missions of the Dart Center, to improve media coverage of trauma, conflict and tragedy.
Jeff and I would like to thank everyone at the Detroit Free Press who worked on putting this project together. We are humbled and thrilled to accept such a prestigious honor from the Dart Center.
Finally, the support of our families and our colleagues at the Detroit Free Press helped us both through a tough and emotional series like this. And for me the words a good friend told me long ago rang true everyday, He told me “Eric, if you learn to shoot with your heart, you’ll move peoples souls.” And I’d like to think I did that in this series.
Thank you all very much.
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Jeff Seidel
Eric Seals
