It was October when 150 protesters took to the streets of the city’s East Side, demanding an end to violence in Saginaw.

Federal Bureau of Investigation statistics indicate a ruthless nature lurking in Saginaw, a city that once boomed with industrial prowess and attracted workers from across the nation but now watches as its population ebbs while the violence stays.

Even as Saginaw lost more than 10 percent of it citizens — more than 7,000 moved away since 2000 — violent crime continues to climb, up more than 50 percent in 2008 compared with 2000, FBI statistics show. The annual violent crime statistics stretching back to 2000 expose the troubles.

The 2008 numbers released in September — the most recent available consolidating crime statistics for more than 8,700 communities — show that once again, as it has each year since 2003, Saginaw ranked as the No. 1 most violent city in America. The ranking is based on violent crimes per person in the nearly 850 cities with populations greater than 40,000.

Occurrences of murder, non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault comprise the categories the FBI uses to gauge a city’s proclivity to violence.

Despite an overall increase in violent crime through 2008, the number of recorded homicides this year, 13, is the third lowest number recorded this decade.

In Michigan, Flint ranked sixth, Detroit 10th and Pontiac 11th based on the 2008 statistics. You have to go back to 2002, a year when Irvington, Calif., topped the list, to find the most recent year Saginaw wasn’t No. 1.

“Our 30-year crime history is appalling,” said Saginaw County Prosecutor Michael D. Thomas, a Freeland Democrat. “You can’t do more with less.”

Thomas identified reductions in police, more lenient state sentencing guidelines and a disproportionately low number of prosecutors in Saginaw County versus similar cities as key factors in Saginaw’s crime rate.

The Saginaw Police Department has 105 sworn officers; it had 136 in November 2000, said Personnel Generalist Beth Church of the city’s Employee Services Department.

Kalamazoo has 40 percent the incidents of violent crime compared to Saginaw, according to 2008 FBI figures, and employs 30 prosecutors. Saginaw County has nearly 20 prosecutors, Thomas said. And statistics show, he said, if you’re tougher on criminals who commit minor crimes, you can reduce the number of major crimes they’re likely to commit in the future.

Christina Jones, 75, a lifelong East Side resident and Houghton-Jones Neighborhood Task Force board member said she’s noticed that “it’s gotten worse” over the last 10 years.

“Hearing the reports, you’re not even safe walking out your door,” she said, “And that’s a scary feeling.”

In the past, she said, violence seemed confined mainly to gang conflicts, but today “these little thugs” are unfocused with the crimes they commit, she said.

The key, Jones said, is reaching youths before they turn 14, after which they “sometimes become hardened and kind of hard to reach.

“We need to try and educate our young people and instill in them some sort of morals,” she said.

Surrounded by lottery, gambling, drinking, smoking and cursing, “they see nothing wrong with it, and most of the parents are involved in all of that. .. They think wrong is right.”

March organizers followed the demonstration with four months of meetings uniting key public figures, service providers, community organizers and residents in a quest for a solution. The sessions promoted synergy between police officers, educators, clergy, youths and government officials.

This month, a “steering session” is planned to complete a “five-point strategic plan,” said Larry D. Camel, the co-founder of Parishioners on Patrol, the group that coordinated the march and meetings.

Law enforcement is key to protecting the public, Thomas said. But even if the court system had the resources to fully prosecute all criminals, legislators still sometimes render impotent the system’s potential to enact justice.

“Our sentencing guidelines tie some of our judge’s hands behind their backs,” he said, removing the judge’s leeway in imposing a sentence and often resulting in shorter sentence benefiting the convict. Thomas said first-offense felons go to prison less than 10 percent of the time in Michigan.

Based on the number of parolees Thomas’s office prosecutes, many convicts are released from prison early, Thomas said.

Midland, a city with about 10,000 fewer people than Saginaw, had only 50 violent crimes in 2008 and ranked as one of the safest cities in the nation at 766 out of about 850 cities in the United States with 40,000 people or more, according to federal statistics. Saginaw Township, with fewer than 40,000 people, recorded 102 violent crimes the same year.

“That tells you what you already know, that Midland is quite a fine town,” Thomas said.