Hours before the Ford Fireworks last month, a Detroit police officer shot 18-year-old Alonzo Lee-Perkins several times during a foot chase. Police say officers were trying to stop him over a suspected gun, that the officer feared for his safety, and that a gun was recovered.

His family doesn’t dispute that he was carrying one — they say he’d been shot before and was afraid for his life. What they dispute is what he did with it. His grandmother says he never took it out, that it was found only after he was shot and fell, wounded in the back.

He survived and was later charged with carrying a concealed weapon, resisting police, and felony firearm, and was released on bond.

Much of what happened is still contested, and the body-camera footage that might settle it has not been released. A city law is supposed to guarantee that footage, but it is frozen by a police union lawsuit. 

Violet Ikonomova, an investigative reporter at the Detroit Free Press, has been following this story. She also spent last year documenting a pattern of police shootings. She sat down with Robyn Vincent on The Metro to discuss whether this case fits that pattern and what we still do not know.

Hear the full conversation using the media player above.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand. Never miss an episode — subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or NPR, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have thoughts? Email the show at metro@wdet.org.

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Over the weekend in downtown Detroit, a 14-year-old boy was shot in the chest near Library Street and Grand River Avenue. Two groups of teenagers had converged outside a Gucci store. Police say there was an argument and one teen, in the chief’s words, “decided to settle it with a firearm.” The boy is expected to live.

For months, teenagers across the country have been mobilizing each other on social media and meeting up. In Detroit, it has been mostly just noise — kids hanging out, looking for something to do in a city that wasn’t built with them in mind.

Some nights, it has turned chaotic.

Last weekend alone, Detroit police detained 109 teenagers across two large gatherings downtown and at Palmer Park, almost all for breaking curfew.

The city’s answer is to give teenagers somewhere to go and enforce the rules more strictly. Mayor Mary Sheffield is working with organizers to move the gatherings into sanctioned spaces. Police are leaning into the existing curfew — 10 p.m. for kids under 16, 11 p.m. for 16 and 17-year-olds—and ticketing parents whose children break it.

One member of the Board of Police Commissioners says this isn’t enough. Darious Morris represents District 3 on the civilian board that oversees the Detroit Police Department. He joined Robyn Vincent on The Metro to talk about what the city owes its teenagers, and what their parents owe them, too.

Hear the full conversation using the media player above.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on demand.

Subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, NPR.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

More stories from The Metro