HOMICIDE'S TRAGIC TOLL: 10 CHILDREN IN 16 WEEKS

Detroit's Youth Are Being Killed In A Year Of Shocking Violence. As
Officials Look For Reasons And Solutions, A Saddened City Weeps.

Alesia dreamed of becoming a pediatrician. Cherrel relished playing in her
school's marching band. Destinee loved Mickey Mouse and eating Doritos.

Though each child was unique in life, they shared the same horrible fate --
death by a bullet.

Their slayings have combined with others to give Detroit an alarming
distinction: a youth homicide rate that has put the city on a path to
outpace the nation's biggest cities this year.

Ten children 16 and younger have been homicide victims in metro Detroit
since January -- eight from gunshots, according to a Free Press analysis of
medical examiner records in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties. All were
killed in Detroit -- giving the city a child homicide rate higher than
Chicago, Los Angeles and seven other large cities surveyed by the newspaper.

Tiffany Vaughn, an eighth-grader at Butzel Middle School on the city's east
side, said everyone in Michigan should be upset by the number of children
who have been killed in Detroit this year.

"How would you feel if somebody did that to someone in your family?" asked
Tiffany, 13, one of dozens of young people who attended an antiviolence
forum last weekend. "Some of these kids had no chance to experience life.
You have to think about them. You can't just think about yourself."

Detroit's homicide rate for children in the first quarter of this year is
3.5 homicides for every 100,000 children.

Of particular concern to police, prosecutors and community leaders is that
nearly as many Detroit children have died from gun violence in four months
as did in all of last year. In 2001, 10 children ages 16 and younger were
fatally shot in Detroit, according to police.

"The violence is out of control," Wayne County Prosecutor Michael Duggan
said Monday. "We've just got to chip away at it."

Michelle Oliver has seen first-hand what guns can do. Her oldest child,
Alesia Robinson, 16, was killed on March 28 while sitting on her front porch
with friends on Detroit's east side. Now, every time Oliver walks into her
home, she pictures Alesia on that porch, bloody and dying.

Alesia, a junior at Kettering High School, was shot in the face by her
boyfriend, police said. Accidental? Intentional? Oliver, 33, said she can't
answer those questions. But Alesia's boyfriend, Darron Kilgore, 19, has been
charged with first-degree murder and is awaiting trial.

Oliver, who has five other children, said she needs to know why her Lesi was
killed. These days, Oliver just tries to stay busy. She spends much of her
time focusing on her 13-year-old son who has leukemia.

"I just don't think people realize the effects of what a gun can do," she
said. "It's crazy. And it's stupid and senseless. Most of these shootings
are."

In The Crossfire

The randomness of some of the killings is what has law enforcement officials
most concerned. Many of Detroit's young homicide victims weren't the
intended targets, police say.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the city's child homicide rate
soared and the number of children being fatally shot was 30, 40 or more a
year, many of the kids were slinging dope or gang banging.

Many of the children shot to death this year -- ages 3, 7 and 8 -- were
simply caught in the crossfire of other people's battles.

Destinee Thomas, 3, was eating chips and watching television on a Saturday
afternoon, March 23, when rounds from an AK47 riddled her home and killed
her. Another victim, Brianna Cadell, 8, slept in her first-floor bedroom
when someone opened fire on her home April 10 and an AK47 round pierced a
wall and killed her.

But the drug trade still plays a role in the deaths of these children,
Duggan said. He noted that Brianna was killed near the most popular corner
in Detroit for getting drugs: Seven Mile Road and I-75.

"That location is riddled with drug dealers, right on the Oakland County
border and serving Detroit and large volumes of suburban customers," Duggan
said.

The Same Problems

Marvin Zalman, interim chairman of Wayne State University's criminal justice
department, said law enforcement officers often tell him that the issues of
guns and drugs that plagued Detroit in the 1980s -- when the city was called
the nation's Murder Capital -- still exist.

"I don't see that crack has disappeared from the streets of Detroit --
there's still a drug problem," Zalman said. "I don't see any of the factors
changing. There's still a population in Detroit that is afflicted with
poverty. There's still a proliferation of guns in Detroit. There's still
some family dysfunction. Social ills exist in our community. It's not a
secret.

"There's a lot of overlap of problems," he said. "But every injured child is
a matter that should concern everyone in society. The criminal justice
system -- prosecutors, police, judges -- have a role to play, but it would
be much better if these things never happened."

Duggan explained the reason for the deaths succinctly: early release of
criminals from the Wayne County Jail due to crowding; 5,000 people in the
county roaming free with felony warrants and 5,000 more with probation
violations who haven't been picked up.

For example, Cedric Pipes, charged with first-degree murder in the shooting
death of Destinee Thomas, was wanted for numerous probation violations at
the time of her slaying.

"You've got a complete collapse of the system and the result is that
dangerous people are out on the street every day who shouldn't be there,"
Duggan said. "In almost everyone of these cases, you see suspects with long
criminal records."

Sometimes the dispute that results in a child's death involves as little as
$40.

That was the value of the car radio allegedly purchased with counterfeit
money that police and prosecutors believe led to the fatal shooting of
Ajanee Pollard, 7, while she sat in a car with her family. Three of Ajanee's
siblings and their mother also were wounded in the Feb. 25 shooting.

Their grandfather Harold Pollard Jr. has flashbacks every time he reads the
newspaper or sees a TV news report about another child killed. He thinks
back in horror to when Ajanee died as the family's car was hit with more
than a dozen bullets.

Ajanee's younger brother, Jason, nicknamed B.J., was just recently released
from the hospital and is finally back at school and able to play outdoors.
But the 6-year-old has extensive physical therapy and counseling ahead of
him.

"This family is not the same as it used to be," said Pollard, 51. "I know
I'm not. When my grandbaby died, something was lost in me forever.

"Those people doing this are killing our future and we as taxpayers foot the
bill for them to sit in prison. It's senseless."

B.J. still asks about his sister.

"He tells me that she is an angel and he wishes he could see her," Pollard
said. "I see her, too. I look at my grandchildren and I see her face."

By The Numbers

Nationally and in Michigan, the number of children killed in homicides has
been on the decline since the early 1990s.

Nationally, 1,008 children 16 and younger were killed in 2000, 384 by
firearms, the most recent figures available from the FBI.

Alfred Blumstein, a professor of public policy at Carnegie Mellon University
in Pittsburgh, said he's most shocked by the younger children getting killed
randomly in Detroit.

Blumstein attributes the national decline in child homicides to a drop in
demand for crack cocaine and a healthy economy before the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks. The peak of youth deaths came in 1993, Blumstein said, at the
height of the crack market.

"What we saw starting in 1985 was the recruitment of young kids, primarily
into the drug markets in part because of the growing demand for crack," he
said. "Older dealers were swept off the streets and responded by recruiting
young kids."

Across Detroit, people are looking for answers and ways to stem the
violence.

On Saturday, young people like Tiffany Vaughn met at Second Ebenezer Baptist
Church in Detroit to discuss ways to reduce gun violence in the city.

Detroit police are working to organize another community meeting on the
issue next month.

Sgt. Ricardo Moore, a Detroit police spokesman, said it's time for the
community to rally together and come up with answers. A date and place for
the meeting have not been set.

"Quality of life is an abstract issue," Moore said. "We see children getting
killed and the only way to attack an abstract issue is through concrete
solutions.

"The faith community can reach the masses. The politicians can help get the
business community involved. We need a collaborative effort of people
getting together and sharing ideas of how to resolve these problems."

Getting Others Involved

Clementine Barfield, founder of the Detroit-based Save Our Sons and
Daughters, said she she hopes that change will occur through a citywide
peace movement and community involvement in youths' lives.

Barfield started SOSAD after her son, Derick Barfield, was killed in 1986.

That year, 653 homicides involving people of all ages occurred in Detroit.
In contrast, last year Detroit had 395 homicides.

Although the numbers have dropped, the toll is still too high, community
leaders said.

Barfield said Detroit children -- all children -- have a right to be safe as
they sleep in their beds, lie on their couches to watch television or ride
down streets in cars.

"But nothing has changed," Barfield said. "We never stop having high numbers
of children being killed. We've let them down by letting their environment
become so violent, filled with guns and drugs.

"If we don't do something to offer hope, there will be no balance to the
death and chaos we see every day."

To change the culture of gun violence, Duggan pointed to programs like
Project Safe Neighborhoods which calls for the prosecution of criminals with
guns in federal court, instead of state courts, which often leads to stiffer
penalties. He would also like to see Wayne County Circuit Court try 250
criminal cases a month. In April, the court tried 146, according to Duggan.

Project Destinee, a collaboration between Duggan's office and the Detroit
Police Department, is aimed at dismantling two rival drug gangs allegedly at
the center of Destinee Thomas' shooting death. The goal is to topple the
drug rings at once, instead of rounding up drug suspects on a weekly basis.

"It's a six-month project," Duggan said. "Until we take them down, we don't
have credibility."