Dearborn Heights has appointed a new police chief, Ahmed Haidar, who has been serving in an acting capacity earlier this year. This decision follows former police chief Jerrod Hart's resignation in mid-2024. Haidar, with nearly three decades of experience with the Detroit Police Department, is set to focus on key concerns, including the city's traffic problems, and has already enacted efforts to address reckless driving, as CBS News Detroit reported. Haidar's approach involves "probable cause traffic stops, more tickets being issued, more monitoring of people that were drag racing," a response to a local tragedy where a teen lost their life allegedly due to street racing.

The city's dedication to curbing this peril is evident in the fact that Haidar mentions there have been almost 850 citations issued for related infractions. He's implementing educational programs with School Resource Officers (SROs) to make an impact on young drivers, the details of which Haidar described saying, "We put a program together with our SROs to where they're going to have programs at the schools, where they're going to review body cameras and accidents and have a conversation with a family member who might have lost a life," which is a development from the CBS News Detroit release. Mayor Bill Bazzi's choice in promoting Haidar to the position of full-time police chief is reflective of the immediate positive influence he's had on the department, as mentioned in a social media post from the Dearborn Heights Police Department's Facebook page.

The selection process for the new police chief was comprehensive, including over 15 applications that underwent a careful review by Mayor Bazzi, assessing experience, knowledge of the community, and the ability to manage the Department, which led to endorsing Haidar who has been a familiar and trustworthy force within the city where he was born and raised and his family still resides, as evidenced both in public statements and improving traffic safety measures since taking over as acting chief.