Tresa Baldas

Detroit Free Press

So far this year%2C Detroit has seen 485 carjackings. That%27s down 31%25 from last year.

The number of carjackings in Detroit have dropped by almost half over the last five years.

Almost as many people get carjacked at gas stations as residents do in their driveways.

Out of 485 carjackings%2C shots were fired 28 times. The totals include four fatalities.

A death sentence.

That's essentially what 25-year-old Phillip Harper of Detroit got when he was was sentenced to 92 years in prison in October for ambushing luxury car owners at gunpoint in a months-long carjacking spree — and no one was hurt.

This is what it's come to in crime-ridden Detroit, a carjack hot spot where violent armed car thieves strike day and night in every corner of the city. Law enforcement agencies have struggled for years to get carjacking under control, calling it a pervasive problem that has struck fear in the heart of the community — and among people who visit the city or consider moving here.

Carjackings occur at an alarming rate in Detroit. Six years ago, the city had 1,231 carjackings — more than three a day. By last year, that number had dropped significantly to 701, but that was still the highest known number of carjackings for any major city in the country.

Through Nov. 17 this year, Detroit has seen 485 carjackings, more than one a day. That's down 31% from last year, yet still three times more than the 160-some carjackings New York City, with 10 times Detroit's population, saw all of last year.

Detroit's shrinking population also may have contributed to the decline in carjackings. The city has lost 13% of its residents since 2008, from 797,000 to 688,000 last year.

If there is good news here, it's that the number of carjackings has dropped significantly — almost by half in five years — due in large part to a coordinated effort by police, the FBI and federal prosecutors.

In 2009, the Detroit Police Department centralized all carjacking investigations and developed a suspect profiling system after recognizing an increasing trend in carjackings. The federal government also intervened by targeting serial carjackers in federal court, where they are receiving stiffer sentences and getting their faces plastered on billboards.

Owners of gas stations — the second biggest target for carjackers in Detroit — are helping, too, by participating in a police-led program that requires them to have surveillance equipment and good lighting.

Better, yes. But acceptable? Absolutely not, said U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade, a Detroit native who believes decades-long sentences are warranted for some carjackers because of the widespread damage they cause.

Motorists are terrorized. Residents are fearful. And visitors won't come here, buy homes here or invest here — all crucial problems for the city as it emerges from bankruptcy.

"To improve the quality of life in Detroit, we need all of the residents to feel safe here. We want people to come do business in Detroit. We want visitors to come to Detroit. And if people are fearful of carjackers, then that's not going to happen," McQuade said.

Detroit's 2014 victims include a mother who was taking her toddler child to a birthday party in broad daylight. Both escaped unharmed. A CVS security guard was shot dead while trying to protect a woman and her child. A 37-year-old man was killed in front of his wife at a fast-food drive-through.

Even Detroit Police Chief James Craig said he was the victim of an attempted carjacking — while he was in his police cruiser — but he sped away.

"We need to send a message," McQuade said. "We're not going to tolerate carjacking here. ... It's wreaking havoc in our neighborhoods."

At 32, Brittany Guerriero of Allen Park decided to move to downtown Detroit. She loved the city and wanted to be a part of its growth, so in September she got an apartment at the Broderick Tower near Comerica Park.

Though she currently works for a human resource firm in Southfield, her last job was with the United Way, trying to make Detroit one of the top places to work by 2030. She was thrilled to move to the city.

But it didn't take long to reconsider her decision.

On Sept. 3, while moving into her apartment, she got carjacked in the valet line. It was 9:30 p.m. She was unloading some housewares from her 2007 Ford Fusion when she was ambushed by two men. One stuck a gun on her right side, poking her in the ribs.

"They boxed me in. ... They said, 'Stay calm. Don't look at us,' " Guerriero recalled. "I said, 'I don't have anything.' It seemed like forever."

She handed her car keys to a man in a black T-shirt, then slowly walked toward the apartment building.

"I was 10 feet from the door, and he said, 'Stop, or I'll shoot you.' So there's another 30 seconds where I'm thinking he's going to shoot me execution-style. I'm just waiting for it," she recalled.

But the men drove away. She ran upstairs.

For days, she was terrified and contemplated moving back to Allen Park.

But she stayed.

"I thought, 'If I go back to the suburbs, I'm letting them win,' " she said. "They can't have Detroit. It's mine. It's ours."

Now Guerriero wants to be a sign of hope for others.

"I don't want people to look at what happened to me ... and say, 'Nope, not going there.' … This is where I belong. This is where I should be."

With the help of surveillance video, Detroit police arrested three suspects in Guerriero's carjacking. She identified the gunman in a lineup and recently testified against him and the getaway driver at a preliminary exam in Wayne County Circuit Court.

The case has not yet gone to trial. Guerriero hopes the suspects get life for terrorizing her and hurting Detroit.

"Detroit is on the upswing," she said. "And it's still very vulnerable. ... We can't let these guys ruin everything we've done in this city."

Detroiter Michael Cope refuses to back down, too. The 41-year-old handyman was carjacked in his driveway on Jan. 22 while warming up his 2008 Dodge Avenger before going to work. He also has two friends who have been carjacked in Detroit. But he's not leaving the city.

"I've been here all my life," Cope said. "You can go anywhere and things are going to happen. You can't say this is a bad place. Things happen everywhere."

Here's what happened to Cope. It was 5:30 a.m. He was warming up his car and his brother's car when a gunman appeared out of nowhere and asked him for money.

"I don't know where he came from. As I turned around, he was standing there with his gun pointed at me. He told me to lay down on the ground," recalled Cope, who thought to himself, "This is it."

"He was like, 'You know what this is. Give me all you got.' ... There were a lot of cuss words in it, but I'm not going to go through all that."

Cope stayed on the ground as the gunman drove away in his car. He ran into the house and told his brother what had happened. The two drove around looking for the attacker, but never found him.

Cope said, to his knowledge, the carjacker is still roaming. But Cope's not scared.

"I don't feel threatened," Cope said, noting he has since put up a privacy fence. "I just park a little farther in the backyard now."

No neighborhood in the city is safe from carjackers

When Craig took over as Detroit's new police chief in July 2013, the city's carjacking problem startled him. He said carjackings were nearing a "crisis level" and that he hadn't seen anything like it — not in Los Angeles, where he had worked for the police department for 28 years, nor in Cincinnati, where he was chief before coming here.

"We can talk about shootings and homicide, but this is the one crime that really drives fear in this city," Craig said at a 2013 anti-carjacking news conference.

The statistics back him up.

According to DPD carjacking reports obtained by the Free Press through the Freedom of Information Act, the city's east side is hardest hit by carjackers — though no neighborhood in the city is safe.

Almost as many people get carjacked at gas stations in Detroit as residents do in their driveways. Most carjackings happen between 8 p.m. and midnight. And twice as many men get carjacked as women. So far this year, for example, 386 male victims have been targeted by carjackers in Detroit, compared with 180 women.

Data also show that residential carjackings of female drivers are more frequent between 8 p.m. and 2 a.m. on Mondays and Tuesdays.

Authorities note that some auto thieves are now resorting to carjacking because technology has made it difficult to steal the old-fashioned way: hot-wiring. Given all the high-tech antitheft gadgets that today's vehicles have, stealing a car is more difficult, they say, so thieves have to get the car while it's running.

Perhaps most troubling is who is committing these crimes: young people.

Most carjackings are committed by individuals under the age of 21, according to Dennis Doherty, an assistant county prosecutor who heads the Auto Theft Unit at the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office.

"They are often new to violent crime and tend to be more careless about getting caught than seasoned older criminals," Doherty said in an e-mail. "Young carjackers are violent. Almost every carjacking we prosecute involves the use of a gun. We see cases where they often beat or even shoot their victims for no reason."

Like others in law enforcement, Doherty views carjacking as a threat to Detroit's health, saying it "must be taken seriously, otherwise it will continue to rob the city of Detroit of its ability to achieve economic recovery."

Of the 485 carjacking incidents analyzed by the Free Press for 2014, the vast majority — 241 — happened on streets or in alleys, where carjackers tend to box victims in. Gas stations were the second-biggest target, getting hit 68 times. Residential driveways were third, accounting for 58 carjackings. Other targets included liquor stores, restaurants, parking lots and a hospital. Even the jail parking lot on Mound Road was hit.

"It's home invasion on wheels," said Assistant Police Chief Steven Dolunt. "It's a target-rich environment. ... These people seem to have no regard for anything. They just want you out of your car. They don't care if you have a kid in the car."

Most of the carjackers got what they wanted without having to fire their weapons. But weapons were fired 28 times, and two victims died of gunshot wounds: CVS security guard Courtney Meeks, 24, who died trying to protect a woman and her child from carjackers outside the pharmacy on Schaefer Road, and Farrad Richmond, 37, killed in the drive-through of Church's Chicken on 7 Mile Road.

Two other victims were beaten to death: Donald Bradshaw, 68, who was attacked with a tire iron after he was carjacked at an intersection on East Vernor Highway, and Albert Johnson, 64, a retired Ford worker who was killed on the city's east side after refusing to transport a carjacker.

Police stress the best way to survive a carjacking is to give up your car.

"It's just a property crime," Dolunt said. "Let it go."

'You need to send a message'

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, there are 49,000 carjackings every year nationwide. But not all states and cities have established carjacking as an independent crime apart from robbery, so it's hard to compare Detroit's carjacking data with every other major city or region.

Here are some comparisons that can be made with Detroit.

Baltimore, which has a comparable population to Detroit of 622,000 residents, saw 176 carjackings in 2012. Los Angeles, which has 3.8 million residents, saw 33 carjackings in 2013 and 48 in 2012. Memphis, Tenn., with 655,000 residents, saw an estimated 150 carjackings over the last year.

But Newark, N.J., with a population of 278,000 residents, had 382 carjackings last year, giving it a higher per-capita rate than Detroit.

Dolunt, who has worked on the Detroit police force for 28 years, is frustrated by the city's carjacking problem. But he noted that progress is being made. For example, between January and August, there were 146 carjacking arrests, which represented a 39% case closure rate, which is better than the national robbery closure rate of 28.7%.

The Wayne County Prosecutor's Office has prosecuted, on average, about 175 carjacking cases a year over the last four years. Like federal prosecutors, state prosecutors also seek stiff punishments — carjacking carries a maximum life sentence in Michigan — but judges rarely hand them out.

For example, in 2012, Wayne County prosecutors initially charged two Detroit teenagers as adults for a string of carjackings on the city's east side that put 6-year-old Shaun Marzette in the hospital with wounds from an assault rifle. The boy survived. Both defendants were 15 and faced maximum life sentences.

But because of their age and plea bargains, in the end, one got 121/ 2 years to 25 years, plus an additional two years for felony firearm; the other got 11 years and 11 months to 20 years, plus an additional two years for felony firearm.

In comparison, a federal judge in 2012 sentenced Tyree Washington, 22, of Detroit, to 60 years in federal prison for a series of violent carjackings, including one in which he threatened to kill a mother and her 5-year-old child outside a beauty supply store in Eastpointe.

More recently, three men were sentenced in October to a combined 230 years in prison for stealing high-end cars at gunpoint to support a chop shop. Two of the defendants were brothers: 25-year-old Phillip Harper, who got 92 years, and Frank Harper, 30, who got 63 years. The third man, Bernard Edmond, 46, of Redford Township, got 75 years.

While no one was physically hurt, they got tough sentences because they were running an organized carjacking ring and were punished under a stiff 1992 law that Congress passed in response to escalating carjacking violence. That law carries penalties of up to 15 years in prison for each count and allows judges to tack on seven more years for every incident that involves a gun.

As a result of this structure, serial carjackers face lengthy, consecutive sentences. In comparison, in Wayne County Circuit Court, the average maximum sentence imposed for carjacking is 20 years.

"You need to send a message," said Dolunt, who after nearly three decades of fighting crime in Detroit applauds the stiff sentences.

Carjacking, he said, has been a problem for far too long. Police are making strides, he said. But more work needs to be done.

"Are we there yet? No, we're not," Dolunt said. "This was a climate that was created over the last 30 to 40 years. You don't just change overnight."

Contact Tresa Baldas: tbaldas@freepress.com (313) 223-4296. Twitter: @TBaldas