- [Announcer] Coming up on "One Detroit": Contributor Nolan Finley sits down for an interview with Detroit's new police chief, Todd Bettison.

Plus, we'll preview this year's Ann Arbor Film Festival and hear from one of the Detroit filmmakers whose work is being showcased.

- You know, to get into it.

- [Announcer] Also ahead, we'll talk about the history of Detroit's Charles H. Wright Museum as it celebrates 60 years.

And we'll give you some entertaining ideas on how to welcome Spring this weekend.

It's all coming up next on "One Detroit."

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(gentle spirited music) - [Announcer] Just ahead on "One Detroit," we'll get the details on this year's Ann Arbor Film Festival and meet one of the local filmmakers in the show.

Plus, it's the 60th anniversary of Detroit's Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History.

We'll look at how the museum has evolved over the years.

And we'll tell you about some of the events happening around town this weekend and beyond.

But first up, Detroit Police Chief Todd Bettison has served in his new role for just over a month.

His new title comes after a 27-year career in the Detroit Police Department, and a stent as Deputy Mayor.

Chief Bettison sat down with "One Detroit" contributor, Nolan Finley, of the Detroit News to talk about his goals for the department and to give an update on the city's Community Violence Intervention Program.

(bright music) - Chief Todd Bettison, welcome to "One Detroit."

- Thank you.

Pleasure to be here, Nolan.

- So I wanna talk to you about a program that you put in place while you were a deputy mayor help put in place.

And that's the Community Violence Intervention Program.

Can you explain that program and how it works?

- Yes, absolutely.

Community Violence Intervention, the key component of it is what we call credible messengers.

And so a credible messenger is someone that whomever they're talking to can relate.

And so when we're talking about violence, oftentimes violence in our community, especially street violence with youth, adolescents, really, it's like that 1% to 2% of the population.

You have to have the right person that they respect to be able to get through, to inspire them to talk to 'em.

And so we have individuals with lived experience that may have been formally incarcerated or that may be 22 to 23 years old, that the individual adolescents and youth who are in gangs can relate to.

And as a result, they can get in and intervene commonly.

- So they're attached to six community groups that you've designated, And those groups are funded by the city.

- Yes.

- And how does it work?

How do they work and how can you measure whether they're impacting violence or not?

- Absolutely.

So these groups, these six community violence interrupter groups, they're in the most violent areas in the city of Detroit.

So each one of them has what we call the community violence zone.

And we have like four zones on the west side, two zones over on the east side.

And we picked the zones based off of historic data going back five years where there were homicides and non-fatal shootings.

Those groups right there stay within those zones and we measure it, comparing it to the same period in time by quarters as of last year.

- And they come up with a plan for reducing violence.

You don't hand them a plan?

- No.

- You ask them to figure out what will work in their zones.

- Yes.

- And how do you measure that?

- So, it's easy.

We measure the categories of homicides and non-fatal shootings.

And so we know how many homicides we had the previous year during that quarter and how many we're having this year.

But here's the thing that makes our program special.

We have a citywide trend.

And so they're compared to the non-CVI areas, the citywide trend, and they have to beat the citywide trend by 10% or 20%.

If they beat the citywide trend, then the only variable that changed was the introduction of them.

Because you still have DPD, you still have technology, you still have FBI, ATF, we're still doing drug raise across the whole city.

The only thing that changed in those violent areas was that group.

So if it goes down, homicides, non-fatal shootings, and the violence goes down in that area, then we attribute the reduction to the group.

- So basically they're working with the groups, the individuals who are most likely to commit violence.

- Yes.

- And how does that interaction play out?

- Oh my god, they're so creative.

They're even going into the juvenile detention facilities.

So we know that we have youth that are there that have been detained.

And so they're mentoring them.

They're also in the neighborhoods identifying... And the neighbors will tell you.

If you live in a neighborhood, senior citizens, other youth, they'll tell you who they're afraid of.

They will let you know which individuals are causing the violence.

They're partnering with the schools as well.

They're even in some of the high schools.

And so after they identify those individuals and they monitor social media, they monitor for disrespect because most of the time violence happens because of argument base.

Somebody feels disrespected, they get in right away, intervene, and start mediating, and teaching conflict resolution skills.

But they'll mediate a beef in real time.

- And they're using these messengers that you talked about in the beginning.

- Yes.

- So I wanna switch now and talk a little bit about gang violence in the city and how big a factor gangs are in driving violence.

And, you know, I think when we talked previously, you mentioned that there's been a real shift in what the gangs are involved in in Detroit.

- Yes, yes, yes.

- Can you tell us about that?

- Oh, absolutely.

And even going back to the credible messengers, our group over on the east side of Detroit, northeast side, we have the Bloods, we have the Crips, gangs.

Detroit Friends & Family has been very successful in mediating a gang truce.

And so we've seen the violence really drop off when it comes to gang violence and street-type violence.

- Are they still involved in drug trafficking?

- Not like they used to be.

They've really diversified.

And so we have gangs out there, in particular over on the west side, and even now on the east side, where it's a lot of fraud, credit card fraud, all type of fraud, identity theft and- - They've gone high tech.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They've diversified their portfolio as well.

Many of these individuals, they're very, very bright.

And so the key is to be able to give them hope and get them involved in something and legitimize 'em where they put those ways aside.

- So these intervention programs were funded by the American Rescue Plan, and those dollars are starting to run out.

How do you keep the initiative going?

- Mayor Mike Duggan, he said, "Hey, be successful."

"Be successful and we'll find a way."

And so working with state legislatures and putting it forth.

We have something called Public Safety Trust fund, and it was House Bill 4605, 4606, which will allocate money to various cities for public safety.

And so the city of Detroit, we're gonna allocate half of those dollars towards community violence intervention.

- And how close are we to be able to say Detroit is a safe city?

- We're getting there.

- You know, it is very safe.

There neighborhoods.

Detroit is one big city of neighborhoods.

And so we have neighborhoods within the city that are safer than some of our suburban counterparts.

And so, but overall, our crime numbers are going down.

This is the safest right now in 60 years that Detroit has ever been.

But that's still not good enough.

We're gonna continue to push it down.

We're gonna use technology.

We we're gonna continue to pay our officers.

We're gonna continue to use community violence intervention.

We're gonna continue to use every tool in the toolbox to provide safety for our residents and our visitors.

And we're gonna be collaborative.

We're gonna work with our law enforcement partners.

I'm gonna work with the community.

Any and everybody, no ego in this, going to where you are to make sure that Detroit is the safest, most vibrant city in the Midwest, and ultimately putting us on the map to be number one in the country.

- Chief Todd Bettison, thanks you for being with us.

We appreciate your time.

- Thank you, sir.

- [Announcer] This year's Ann Arbor Film Festival takes place March 25th to the 30th at the Michigan Theater.

It's the 63rd year of the festival, which highlights works from filmmakers all over the world.

"One Detroit's" Chris Jordan spoke with Detroit filmmaker, Joanie Wind, whose short film is being shown on opening night, and the festival's executive director Leslie Raymond.

(gentle bright music) - So the 63rd annual Ann Arbor Film Festival is coming up.

Tell me a bit about the Ann Arbor Film Festival and its history.

- One of the challenges is when people hear experimental film, they're like, "Ooh, I don't know what that is."

So it's a little freaky, right?

So what I try to tell people is, if you think of us as more like going to the art museum as opposed to the Cineplex, like, that'll get you more in the right frame of mind, except it's a collective viewing experience.

The festival itself is six days starting March 25th.

It'll run from Tuesday to Sunday of that week.

Filmmakers come in from all over the country.

The world, really, we get submissions from a hundred countries typically every summer and what we'll be seeing with the competition work is we've gone from about 2,800 films submitted to, I think this year 112, that we'll show in the competition.

And where we might have something that is like an experimental narrative, or it could be something hybrid.

It could be an animated documentary or a music video for that matter, or an animated music video documentary.

It could be that.

But what we're usually seeing is somehow the filmmakers are doing something different than what we see in mainstream filmmaking.

They're doing something where they might take the medium and see how can you push it in one way or the other to be creative and expressive.

In some cases, it might be a particular story that may be in a documentary, or it could be a narrative that is told in a way that we don't normally see, or is a story that we don't typically hear.

- How many of the submissions are from Michigan versus nationally or globally?

- It's interesting, this year, we had a bumper crop of Michigan submissions.

I feel like typically we'll see maybe 20 or 30, but we got about 70 this year from the area.

We're featuring five or six from Michigan this year, which when you look at the overall global representation, it's on the high side because we really do want to help promote the work of filmmakers who are here and give them the opportunity to be seen by this amazing audience and to meet the other filmmakers who come in from all over the place.

There's a film by Peter Sparling, who is a professor emeritus of dance at the University of Michigan, and he has been making dance films for many years.

And because we have a special program, this year we've collaborated with Screen Dance International, which has been a dance film-oriented festival that's been taking place in Detroit for I think maybe about a decade or so.

And they're going to be showing a program here.

So Peter's film, while it's going to be technically in competition of the Ann Arbor Film Festivals included in this specially curated program of dance films.

Oh, Julia Yezbick, her film, "Marratein, Marratein," will have its world premiere.

She has been making and showing films for a number of years at the Ann Arbor Film Festival.

She's also curated special programs with us.

She teaches at Wayne State, and we've got this amazing film called "Simulacrums" by Joanie Wind, who is a Detroit based artist, who is a former Ann Film Festival intern from years ago.

So those are some examples.

- And, Joanie, so your short is in the, the opening night, opening night shorts competition.

That's right.

- Tell me a bit about it.

- It's hard to describe.

The character is basically me in a wig with a propeller hat, and she's trying to kind of find something authentic and kind experience pleasure, I guess.

She makes herself a sandwich and it turns out to be plastic and she can't eat it.

And things kind of just go downhill from there.

Visually, it takes some turns.

I've always done a lot of collagey stuff.

I've always been trying to figure out how I could actually include painterly things like analog paint into the videos.

So that's part of what that was.

Things that I could have done digitally, I did analog, and things I could have done analog, I did digitally kind of thing.

So it kind of pushes and pulls your like perception of, "Oh, what's real?"

And, you know, which kind of follows the idea behind it.

- Leslie mentioned that you were an intern at the festival back in the day.

So what's your filmmaker journey been like?

- Well, I was formerly trained as a painter and I didn't start doing video art until grad school.

And it kind of translated, I think, pretty seamlessly.

Even when I was in, throughout, you know, being in school, going to the Ann Arbor Film Festival was like a time and event, you know, it was... You see stuff that you don't come into contact with.

So yeah, it's kind of a trip, and it was always kind of an inspirational thing for me.

- I mean, what's it like going from, you know, having gone to the festival as a student and then having interned here and now you have a film be line up.

- So maybe your third film, second or third film.

- This is my third film in the festival, yeah.

My first one was in 2019, and then I had one in 2020.

It's really an honor to be a part of it.

It's strange 'cause it's like I've spent so much time, I guess, close to the festival now in a way, like proximity and also being an intern.

But, yeah, realizing that this is one of the best film festivals for the work that I do, you know, to get into.

And that's... And it being so close is just kind of happens to be that way.

- What makes this festival to you so unique and so special?

- I really felt as a young artist that it really informed so much about how I thought about making art.

There's this...

The conditions of viewing and having an audience.

And, you know, so you can be an artist and work in your studio and make stuff, and that's cool.

And then there's the part where then if it's a film, say, it really becomes complete when it hits the screen and then the audience is there and they see it.

So it kind of completes the circuit.

But then to take it to the next level, then people talk about it with each other.

And I would say that that is like one of the most important core pieces of this festival.

That conversation.

- [Announcer] This year marks a major milestone for the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American history.

It was 60 years ago this month when Dr. Charles H. Wright and 32 members of the Detroit community agreed to create a museum about the Black experience.

Contributor Stephen Henderson of American Black Journal spoke with Kevin Davidson, the Wright's longtime Director of Design and Fabrication About the museum's history.

(gentle bright music) - Let's start with your history with the Wright, which goes back quite a ways.

Not quite 60 years, but the majority of that, right?

How did you come to the museum?

- I actually was introduced to the museum in 1980, and I was on loan, placed on loan to the museum from the Detroit Council of the Arts at the time to work on an exhibit that focused on Black insurance companies.

And we completed that project and, you know, I went on, and I got a call from the museum in 1982.

And Dr. Wright wanted me to come in and work on an exhibit on Black voting rights.

And so I met with him and he gave me a book and said, you know, "This is something that you're gonna extract your script from."

I remember the author's name was Holt.

I can't remember his first name.

I think it was Robert Holt.

And so from there, he kind of paired me with one of the longtime volunteers, Margaret Zarif.

And she collected images.

I did some additional research and designed and installed that exhibit on voting rights.

- Yeah, yeah.

- And he loved it.

- And he hired you.

- Yeah.

- And so- - And you've been there since.

- Right.

And he invited, he said, "I need you to do one on Charles Drew."

And I did that.

And then he asked me to redesign the mobile unit, which traveled over all around the state.

And so I did that and he said, "Well, you know, you may as well stick around."

- [Stephen] Like, "We're gonna keep you here."

- Yeah.

- Talk about in those early days, though, what the museum was like and how different it is now.

I mean, now it's basically a like a monument, right?

I mean, it's this wonderful physical space.

Back then, it was a little more understated.

- Yeah, it was located first in the basement of a three-row house on West Grand Boulevard and Warren, right on the corner.

It was Dr. Wright's residence, you know?

He and his family lived there.

And so when he founded the museum, he set up exhibits in the basement.

He eventually moved out, moved downtown, and basically went in and converted all of those spaces to gallery spaces.

So, so when I started, part of my job too was to convert some spaces.

So I worked with a carpenter, and we went in and, you know, tore out walls and, you know, did some plastering.

And I converted some spaces, and so I started installing exhibits.

It's a house.

It's a three-row house, so, you know, when we had tours, you know, you had to take 'em up the stairs, into the gallery, back out, and into the next building, and back out, and then into the next building, and back out.

Dr. Wright's sister volunteered with us at the time, Pearl Battle, and it was the two of us, you know, conducting these tours through the building.

And, you know, we went from that to a structure that we built from the ground up in the cultural center that's occupied by CCS now on the corner of Frederick Douglas and Brush.

And even before we moved into that building, plans were already underway for the Phyllis facility we're in right now.

- [Stephen] Yeah, for the museum itself that everyone is so familiar with now.

- [Kevin] Yes, yeah.

- Talk about the difference between making exhibits in the basement of a three-row house and the space you have now.

I'm thinking of the Jefferson exhibit that was there just a few years ago.

- [Kevin] Oh, yeah.

- The wonderful art and the costume exhibit that was there last year.

I mean, these are large scale kinds of exhibits now.

Very different from being in a basement.

- It's a different world.

(both laughing) You know, everything had to be put together by hand and I'm taking little litters and creating, you know, these introductory panels and, you know, everything had to be constructed by hand back then.

More time consuming.

You know, we were doing key lines for prints and all of that.

And so it's a different world.

And, of course, you know, when you compare just, you know, the space, you're talking about, you know, a bathroom versus a mansion.

- Right, right.

- You know?

But along with the change in facilities, you know, you can bring in contractors.

And so that's part of what I do, is, you know, do the elevations and floor plans and construction drawings and they take those and, you know, build these platforms, cases and- - [Stephen] I mean, they're experiences.

- Yeah, yes.

- I mean, I always feel like you're walking through the subject matter when I'm there.

- That's our goal.

- Yeah.

- You know, and I worked on our core exhibit being Still We Rise and we wanted to make that fully immersive.

And so we certainly achieved that with that exhibit, and, you know, we continue to pursue that.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- [Announcer] There's a wide range of events taking place this first weekend of spring.

From theater productions to concerts and outdoor activities, there's something for everyone.

Here's Dave Wagner from 90.9 WRCJ with today's "One Detroit" weekend.

- Hey there, I'm Dave Wagner with 90.9 WRCJ here to help you plan your days ahead with great events happening in metro Detroit.

On Friday, March 21st, the Secret Society of Twisted Storytellers comes to the Wright Museum to celebrate Women's History Month with Women Warriors.

Hosted by "One Detroit" contributor, Satori Shakoor, the show features women sharing their inspiring tales and special dance performances.

Also, March 21st, the Simon & Garfunkel Story is coming to the Andiamo Celebrity Showroom in Warren.

It's a concert-style experience that takes you through the journey of the duo's career.

And on Saturday, March 22nd, Cabaret 313 presents Catherine Russell: Swing, Soul, and Stories, featuring Russell performing a mix of swing, jazz, and blues enriched with her personal storytelling.

Starting March 22nd and going through April 19th, Alice Through the Looking Glass runs at the Boardwalk Theatre in St. Clair.

The classic tale follows Alice into a world where everything, even logic, is turned upside down.

And through March 30th, The Flint Repertory Theatre presents A Driving Beat, a story about a boy and his adoptive mother on a cross-country journey as they navigate their differing identities.

And there's always so much more to do in Metro Detroit, so stay tuned for more great events coming up, and have a great weekend.

(gentle bright music) - [Announcer] That'll do it for this week's "One Detroit."

Thanks for watching.

Head to the "One Detroit" website for all the stories we're working on.

Follow us on social media and sign up for our weekly newsletter.

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Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by: The Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

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Among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan-focused giving, We support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Learn more at dtefoundation.com.

- [Announcer 3] Nissan Foundation, and viewers like you.

(bright music)