gun violence

Group seeks to interrupt the outbreak of violence in Grand Rapids

Stateside Staff — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 22:05:09 +0000

In 2012, Grand Rapids saw an outburst of violent crime, including nine homicides in which all of the victims died from gunshot wounds.

This week, two community groups called Urban League and Network 180 are hosting a series of meetings to inform the public about possible solutions and to begin a discussion about the future of violence in the Grand Rapids community.

Raynard Ross is a resident of Grand Rapids and works with Upward Bound at Grand Rapids Community College. Ross also serves on a panel to address the issue of violence within the Grand Rapids community.

The interrupters

According to Ross, street violence has reached a level of “borderline madness.”

“There’s a lot of retaliatory violence,” Ross said. “[Grand Rapids] is relatively small, so the degree of separation with those involved is one or two degrees tops. We’ve found that a lot of this violence is occurring based on misunderstandings and things begin to snowball and escalate and next thing you know we have something that could have been squashed by some early interrupting.”

That’s where someone like Cobe Williams comes in.

Sorting out Michigan's gun laws

Rick Pluta — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 17:53:28 +0000

“No guns” is a pretty simple and common policy in Michigan schools.

Students are expelled for bringing firearms. But Michigan law is less clear on what schools can do when adults show up with a firearm.

It’s pretty unusual, but it occasionally happens.

Now, I’m not talking about an armed aggressor, but a parent or some other adult visitor who carries a weapon – either concealed or openly.

Emotions still running high after Saginaw fatal police shooting

Kate Wells — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 18:37:59 +0000

Justice still hasn’t been done in the case of a fatal police shooting of a mentally ill man in Saginaw this summer.

That was the message at a community forum this week, where some 200 residents came out to express frustration with local law enforcement, and with the county prosecutor for declining to press criminal charges against the officers.

Among the mostly African American crowd at the forum, the primary question seemed to be: why was so much lethal force used on July 1^st, the day Milton Hall was shot by police 11 times?

Flint to use high tech tool to target gun crime

Steve Carmody — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 18:32:29 +0000

The city of Flint is turning to a new high tech tool to crack down on gun crime in the city.

The "Shot Spotter” system uses more than a dozen sonic sensors to pinpoint the location of where gun shots are fired in a square mile area. The SST system is already being used in more than 60 cities around the country, including Saginaw.

Company president Ralph Clark said the Shot Spotter system should help Flint police officers respond to reports of gunfire in the city.