After a spike this month in fatal gun crimes, the city of Flint is turning to state and federal law enforcement, and Flint residents for help.
A recent series of unrelated shootings left five people dead in Flint in one week. For all of 2026, Flint has recorded more than two dozen shooting deaths.
Police Chief Terence Green said his department is stepping up enforcement of suspicious activity.
“The drivers of this crime, we’re going to target you,” Green told reporters Tuesday. “We’re going to continue to target you hard through our initiatives, through all of our efforts, to arrest you and put you in jail.”
For more than a decade, the Michigan State Police deployed troopers to assist Flint police, often patrolling city streets as city officers conducted investigations. Earlier this year, the MSP changed its deployment strategy.
Col. James Grady is the director of the Michigan State Police. While not pledging to resume more visible patrols in the city of Flint, Grady promised to allocate resources to Flint police, stressing the need for agencies to partner together.
“We cannot do it all,” said Grady. “It takes a full, comprehensive, community approach to have the impact that it needs here in this city and across the state of Michigan.”
A key focus on the city’s response to the spike in gun violence is to get the public’s help getting Glock switches off Flint streets. Also known as an auto sear, switches are devices used to switch semi-automatic weapons into fully automatic guns.
“We’re hunting for those,” said Flint Mayor Sheldon Neeley.
Neeley says tips submitted by Flint residents to Crime Stoppers that lead to an arrest for a gun switch would be worth $500.
