The Grand Rapids Police Department is dealing with another homicide, as a shooting on the city’s Southwest Sunday evening left one man dead. The murder capped off a violent weekend in the city as the number of homicides continues to grow at a potentially historic rate.
The incident occurred around 9:15 PM in the area of Curve Street and Underhill Avenue SW. When police arrived on the scene, officers discovered a man inside a vehicle with a gunshot wound.
Authorities say paramedics performed life saving measures, however, he was pronounced dead before making it to the hospital.
It’s another murder in the city of Grand Rapids after the GRPD has held multiple press conferences, pleading with the community to put an end to gun-violence.
Sunday marked the city’s 26th homicide of the year. To put that into perspective, the record is 34 set back in 1993; meanwhile, the city recorded 17 homicides in all of last year, and just 9 in all of 2018.
It’s still September. So what is going on?
“Certainly there is frustration, there is frustration that we sometimes can’t get the cooperation that we are looking for,” Grand Rapids Police Sgt. Dan Adams said. “But there is also a profound sense of, just sadness and remorse too; that there is another family that is affected through a loss, a senseless loss, and a violent loss.”
“We (the GRPD) are definitely not robots, we feel the loss, we feel the pain, and that is why we come into work each day,” he said.
Last month, the GRPD released a three-year strategic plan to curb gun-violence and increase public safety, while two weeks ago, the department announced that they would increase patrols in historically high crime neighborhoods to put an end to weekend violence.
