Detroit judge reports drop in evictions, warns of rising danger to court officers

Chief Judge Bill McConico of the 30th District Court told the Detroit City Council that eviction filings in Detroit have fallen sharply since 2019 and that increased legal representation under the city's Right to Counsel ordinance is driving more agreements and fewer evictions.

McConico said, "we are having 10,000 less eviction cases, per year than we did pre pandemic," and reported that legally represented defendants rose from under 2% in 2019 to "over 35%" last year, a shift he said is producing more consent judgments and fewer completed evictions.

The drop in filings coincides with other changes McConico described as central to the court's recent work: stepped-up community outreach and specialty-court programming, new grants, and a set of capital repairs to the court building funded through a council appropriation. "We received $550,000" and "$646,007.61" in Department of Justice grants for drug, veterans and related specialty programs, McConico said, and listed additional state court administrator awards for drug court, mental health court, veterans court, a clean slate program, a virtual-backlog initiative and a legal self-help center.

McConico also raised safety concerns for court officers executing evictions. He recounted a fatal incident last year in which a former tenant attacked a police officer with a box…