Quote Originally Posted by erikd View Post
People did not abandon Detroit because of crime. The rising crime did not start until hundreds of thousands had already left the city. Detroit's crime rates were fairly stable until the mid 1960s, when the crime rates suddenly exploded. Detroit had 102 homicides in 1944, 103 in 1949, 108 in 1954, 106 in 1959, and 125 in 1964. The crime really started to explode in 1965 when the homicide total jumped to 188, and then continued to skyrocket at incredible rates, up to 389 in 1968, 577 in 1972, and 714 in 1974.

According to the Free Press and US Census data, Detroit's population peaked at close to 2 million around 1953. By 1965, Detroit's population was already under 1.6 million. The city of Detroit's population dropped to 1.511 million in the 1970 census, and was down to 1.203 million in the 1990 census.


To put these numbers into perspective, Detroit lost around 400,000 residents in the 12 years just before the crime explosion that started in 1965, but this massive population loss actually slowed down after the crime explosion started. It took more than 25 years AFTER the 1965 crime explosion for Detroit to lose another 400,000 residents.

The population decline of Detroit happened for a number of reasons, but rising crime was not one of them.
As other people have said, this is ridiculous. It is true that crime was not the only reason people left Detroit, and that Detroit's population was dropping before crime became a major issue, but to take that as implying that crime wasn't ever a major issue is illogical, and in this case, contrary to fact.