Chaldean Store Owners Team Up with Detroit Police

Commander Starks exchanges her cell phone number with Chaldean retailers.

Detroit Community Business Partnership

By Cal Abbo

The Detroit Police Department’s 10th precinct is partnering with the Chaldean American Chamber of Commerce to network with store owners and discuss new strategies to reduce crime, ethnic tension, and negative perceptions.

The project involves lots of different people and organizations including officers from DPD, representatives from the CACC, individuals from Project Green Light, and store owners and employees located in the 10th precinct. Sharkey Haddad, who works on special projects for the CACC, hosted the initial meeting at Sahara Restaurant and Grill in Oak Park.

The meeting, held on March 26, was well-attended by about a dozen store owners and another dozen police officers and representatives of Project Green Light. The two groups mingled and discussed how they can collaborate to keep Detroit and Chaldean businesses safe.

Most notably, the 10th precinct’s new leader, Commander Shanda Starks attended the meeting and spoke to the group about her role and goals in the position. She also introduced each Neighborhood Police Officer (NPO) in her precinct as well as the areas they patrol.

The NPO program was designed by the City of Detroit to divide and conquer each precinct by establishing long-term ties to the community and businesses in a certain area. Each NPO patrols their designated area with the goal of building relationships with the community and its businesses rather than simply finding and arresting criminals.

Reva Mammole, Sharkey Haddad, Commander Starks, Fadi Ayar, Danny Denha.

Sharkey also spoke on the importance of Chaldean-owned businesses establishing connections with the police department as well as the local community. In his mind, this kind of relationship building is a relatively simple thing that can lead to lasting change in Detroit and prevent unnecessary violence between the community and the businesses that operate there.

Finally, Green Light Program Managers Sheila Young and LaMonica Williams spoke about the program, its importance for the city, and how to join if a business is interested.

Project Green Light began in 2016 when a group of Chaldean store owners met with Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan to find a way to make the community safer and reduce crime in their businesses. The city came up with Project Green Light, which established a protocol for participating businesses to install cameras and share live video feed to the Detroit Police’s Real-Time Crime Center.

When it began, the program had only eight gas stations signed up. Today, 900 businesses participate in the program, and the unmistakable green light shines throughout Detroit, alerting potential criminals to police surveillance and allowing the Detroit Police an unprecedented response time at locations that use Green Light.

The program has ballooned tremendously and has also added new technology. All the video footage is embedded with License Plate Recognition (LPR), which helps officers track criminals. Even if they can’t be caught in the act, the license plate goes into the police system and the vehicle can be identified and pulled over later.

In addition, the Detroit Police has an entire team dedicated to live-monitoring the Green Light cameras. Since there are 900 participating businesses, each with several cameras, it’s impossible to monitor everything at once. Instead, officers conduct “virtual patrols” and look for suspicious or criminal activity. Now that there are so many participants, officers can watch entire blocks at a time.

While the city does not charge for the program directly, businesses are responsible for buying or leasing cameras from an approved vendor list, installing them, and then purchasing and installing the famous flashing green light and signage indicating the business’ participation in the program.

The CACC, the Chaldean community, and the City of Detroit will continue to strengthen their partnership and connect with one another to improve crime and ethnic tensions, and cultural understanding within the city.