OPINION: We should be more outraged about rape in Detroit | Opinion

Jan. 06--This week, the Detroit Police Department released its 2017 statistics: The murder rate is down, sharply, near record lows. So are nonfatal shootings and robberies.

"Our work does continue. We're certainly not waving the flag of success. But steady progress absolutely," Detroit Police Chief James Craig said at a Thursday press conference.

Progress? Sure.

As long as you're not a victim of rape.

In contrast to those other crimes, rape has barely moved: 587 rapes were reported in 2017, compared to 593 in 2016. In 2015, 537 Detroiters reported the crime.

The number of reports most likely represents a fraction of the number of overall rapes. RAINN, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, estimates just 1 in 3 victims of rape make reports, markedly lower than victims of other kinds of crimes.

Why is the murder rate an indicator of how troubled a city is, but the number of rapes reported isn't?

It is a maddening blind spot that it is impossible to understand.

Murder is a heinous crime. So is rape. One is viewed as a marquee news. The other as an addendum. It's a contradiction that both describes and perpetuates the problem. If rape isn't a defining crime -- if the number of people raped each year doesn't accrue to a city's or police department's or community's discredit -- the significance of the crime, and the respect and duty due its victims, is diminished.

So for the 587 Detroiters who reported rapes last year, the news that crime is down has to seem like a sick joke.

Craig, to his credit, has emphasized a culture of accountability, of taking sex crimes seriously, within the department. This is a department that, long before Craig's arrival, allowed more than 11,000 rape kits to sit, untested in a police warehouse while victims were denied justice and perpetrators walked free.

It's easy for some people to sweep sexual assault crimes under the rug, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy told me last month, speaking of the city's rape-kit backlog in an interview unrelated to, and conducted before, the DPD statistics were released. Worthy has crusaded to test the kits, investigate the crimes, and prosecute the perpetrators

"I don't understand that," Worthy said in December. "Everybody has a mother. A sister, a wife or a partner, or aunt or some female that they are close to. And men, too. This happens to men ... (and) children."

A 2015 National Institute of Justice report about the backlog offered some insight: "Over the years these kits were developing, (police) were just completely overwhelmed with crime in the city, and sex-assault crimes were not an organizational focus," said Rebecca Campbell, a Michigan State University professor and one of the report's authors, told me then. "They were very concerned with homicide rates, property crimes, assaults ... things that contributed to quality of life in the city" -- absent any recognition that rape might affect quality of life.

It's impossible to separate this casual dismissal of this crime from its most likely victims: In Detroit, African-American women.

"If you're a person of color, if you're a different economic class, then your case across the board -- across the board, not just sexual assault -- they're treated differently," Worthy told me last month. "And that's just the truth. People may not want to admit it, but I've seen it throughout my career and I know it's true."

Folks who've worked on the rape kit backlog have, at times, expressed cautious optimism that the culture is changing.

It isn't changing fast enough.

Contact Nancy Kaffer: nkaffer@freepress.com

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