Crime survivors in Michigan discuss public safety and victim support

July 20, 2024

At a meeting of Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice in Detroit on Saturday, Michigan organizers and survivors of violent crime shared their visions for public safety and survivor care.

The intimate conversation and candlelight vigil for the survivors came as Detroit residents continue to grapple with political and policing issues following the deadly July 7 mass shooting in the city.

From recent victims to Michiganders still trying to process the experiences of decades of violence, organizers of CSSJ, a national group, called on people to join them and other local chapters in a March for Crime Victims on September 23 and 24 in Washington, DC.

“For us, security is not just about putting more police on the streets,” said Aswad Thomas, CSSJ national director, at the rally on Saturday. “Security is not just about locking people up and throwing away the key.”

Thomas was 26 when a stranger shot him in the back in Highland Park, he said. The injuries ended his basketball career, cut off his income and upended his life as medical bills, student loans and rent payments piled up, he said.

The shooting was just the beginning of the upheaval in Thomas’ life, he said, and comprehensive, specialized support services for survivors could have eased the impact. Faced with growing financial pressures and limited mobility due to his injuries, Thomas wishes he had received physical therapy to aid his recovery, he said.

Through organizing with other survivors, Thomas learned that existing resources, such as Michigan’s Crime Victims’ Compensation Program, were too restrictive to meet the practical needs of many survivors, he said. Other victims who had contact with him through CSSJ told him they were also looking for personal support that government resources could not provide.

Organizers have pressured lawmakers to expand program services for crime victims in Michigan and to fairly distribute unused state funds to nonprofits, Thomas said.

The teenager who shot Thomas was also a victim of gun violence, he said. With no dedicated victim support resources, this cyclical violence in the community nearly cost Thomas his life, he said.

To end the cyclical violence, residents and policymakers in Detroit and other Michigan communities must think beyond reactive responses using the traditional criminal justice system, Thomas added.

“It’s about more jobs, more education, more youth programs, more recovery programs, more substance abuse and addiction treatment programs, more support for victims,” Thomas said. “What would it look like if we had a right to heal?”

Detroit residents and politicians recently criticized Detroit police plans to restrict permits for street festivals and send more than 80 officers into neighborhoods to punish building code violations.

Some residents told the Detroit News that even with permits, the July 7 shooting that left two people dead and 19 others injured would not have been prevented.

People in affected communities need to pause between their responses to outbreaks of violence, said Juanita Harper, 68, a Pontiac resident who attended Saturday’s event.

To move forward meaningfully together, it is crucial to give survivors enough time and space to ask for what they need to heal, she said.

“Part of the healing process is realizing that you need to be heard,” Harper said. “We go through life with these traumas and eventually, if you don’t deal with it, if you don’t recognize that you really need this healing, then it will just pass.”

Harper’s brother died in the 1967 Detroit riots, she said. Today she is a community leader at Dare to Dream Pontiac and the Pontiac CSSJ chapter. Harper told The News that connecting with other crime survivors has given her new perspectives on what healing means.

“Healing is different for everyone, especially in marginalized communities,” said LaDonna Spight, 61, executive director of the Sisters Against Abuse Society. “Traditional services tell you what to do, but the autonomy of these services means we tell you what we need.”

Angelique Mills, a peer support specialist and social health worker, said she believes building trauma recovery centers for survivors across Michigan is very valuable.

Having a place survivors can go for safe housing, rental assistance, health care and other services they personally need is a viable way to take care of the community, she said.

Without adequate victim care, residents and entire communities could be stuck in the trauma of violent crime for decades, Mills said.

“If you don’t do that, it stays in your genes and gets passed on when you have a child,” she said of the need for specialized, accessible victim support services. “We’re traumatizing generation after generation because we haven’t had the true healing that we needed.”

Tinu Usoro, 32, said she has learned that her grandparents’ trauma as crime victims still affects her family. The Detroit woman said she bears a striking resemblance to her grandmother, who was shot in the face by a white gunman in a bar.

“In my family, black women were constantly and closely surrounded by violence,” said Usoro, an organizer with the Young Voices Action Collective. “I think about how I was a victim of some kind of violence from the day I was born. Now my heart hurts because last year I learned that my own child was a victim of violence at the hands of her father.”

Victims of crime all have different relationships with the people who harmed them and different expectations of what justice should look like, says Priscilla Bordayo, national director of CSSJ.

Bordayo said she was 12 years old when her father abused her, and it took her and her relatives years to come to terms with it.

To move forward, she remembered her faith, which values forgiveness.

“I think that’s what was important to me,” Bordayo said. “For others, healing actually means justice. That’s why I say there’s such a diversity of experiences and desires and what we all want to see happen. But we always come back to what we have in common, and that is that we all want healing.”

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