OAKLAND COUNTY, MI (WXYZ) — The Oakland County Sheriff's Office is reporting a slight uptick in homicides for 2022. In 2021 the office reported 35 homicide cases, in 2022, there were 37.
These crimes were committed in communities like Hazel Park, Troy, Oxford, Rochester Hills, and Pontiac. In 2022 Pontiac had 14 of the 37 homicides.
"I've been here all my life but not one time I ever thought that my kid would be killed," Martha Goans, mother of Ikyana Roselle said.
On December 4, Ikyana was shot and killed outside of a home in Pontiac. No arrests have been made.
There Is currently a $2000 reward for any information that will lead to an arrest of Ikyana's killer. If you know anything please call 1-800-SPEAK-UP.
According to Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard, response times and murder cases overall are down, but his goal is to get them to zero.
"In 2018 they had 19 homicides and in 2021 they have 15 so our trends have been down generically but our goal is to get it 0," he said.
In 2011, the Oakland County Sheriff took over patrols turning their police station into a substation. Their 911 response times went down from 80 minutes to six minutes. Violent crime rates declined by 25% and the sheriff's office's case closure rate is now between 80% and 90%.
"When we assumed police operations in Pontiac they were in the top 10 of most violent in America. Now, they are nowhere near that," Bouchard said.
Pontiac City Council President Michael McGuinness says to make a better future for his city people need to understand Pontiac's past of economic uncertainty when General Motors left the city.
"During the great recession and the General Motors bankruptcy, we lost 10s of thousands of jobs and that means 10s of thousands of families were destabilized and had a lot of economic uncertainty, and that played a big part," he said.
