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A recent uptick in crime, with everything ranging from larcenies to assaults and robberies, has police asking for residents’ help in catching criminals.

Over the last two weeks the city has been wracked by crime that has included at least a dozen arrests of suspects in connection with several property and violent offenses. Police said the outbreak is above average for this time of year — crime rates tend to fluctuate seasonally — and that there has been a marked air of desperation from the suspects in several of the cases.

“They’re getting more brazen and more desperate,” Police Chief Ronald Haddad said last week in an interview. “We’ve really been surprised by this, though.”

The recent brazenness is underscored most by two cases: one in which two men were arrested for allegedly beating and robbing people across the city and other neighboring communities and one in which a man and a woman threatened to blow up a check cashing business during an armed robbery.

For the year, crime rates in Dearborn have been on an upswing, Haddad said, with several high-profile incidents stealing headlines, like the murder last month of 23-year-old Hassan Zeidan in a dispute over a basketball game.

While there is no way to definitively diagnose the root causes of the crime increase, Haddad attributed much of it to the economy.

Historically, crime rates have tended to trend upward with periods of economic struggles and here in southeast Michigan, where the relative decline of the bedrock automotive industry has meant the loss of thousands of jobs and chronic unemployment, the economic indicators have been almost exclusively negative. And as unemployment insurance for many starts to run out, the cumulative effects of the financial grind are starting to manifest themselves in crime, Haddad posited.

“I think a lot of it has to do with the economic circumstances in the area,” he said. “People are out of options.”

Another possible factor Haddad mentioned is the hotter-than-usual weather. Like the effects of a cooling economy, hot temperatures also have been linked to increases in crime. As of Tuesday, when temperatures were expected to reach a high of 84, there had been 44 straight days with temperatures above 80-degrees in the metro area, with many 90-plus degree days mixed in.

The theory is predicated on the belief that if it is hotter outside, then people are more likely to be outside, making it more likely that criminals would be out and about and also that homeowners themselves could be away from home, creating an opportunity for crooks. Continued

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