Detroit’s ninth annual Halloween in the D brings candy and family activities to the city this Halloween, a very different approach from the volunteer patrols once organized to deter fires. Organizers prepared 1.8 million pieces of candy, up from 1.3 million the previous year, CBS Detroit reported. The event includes three dozen trunk-or-treat stops staffed by police officers and firefighters, with recreation centers, police precincts and nine firehouses among the trick-or-treat destinations, according to WXYZ.
From fire prevention to a public celebration
The patrol effort grew out of a problem that went beyond Halloween pranks: fires at abandoned properties. The Detroit Historical Society says the city’s fire department put out more than 800 fires in 1984; MLive reports 810 fires from Oct. 29 through 31 that year.
Detroit added enforcement measures, including a 10 p.m. curfew on Oct. 30 for people under 18 in 1986, the Historical Society says. The city also mobilized neighborhood volunteers to watch for arson. The Historical Society dates that initiative to 1995; MLive describes the patrols as part of what had been called Angels’ Night since the 1990s. By 2008, about 35,000 people had signed up to volunteer, MLive reported. CBS Detroit said reported fires over the three-day period had fallen by more than half a decade after the program began; that reported change does not, by itself, establish how much the volunteer effort caused the decline.
The city ended Angel’s Night in 2017 and replaced it with Halloween in the D, according to the Historical Society. The change recast the city’s Halloween response around a public celebration rather than volunteer anti-arson patrols. Destructive incidents have not disappeared: the Society says such pranks have declined, and Outlier Media reported that Detroit firefighters responded to no intentional fires on Halloween or the preceding night in 2022.
National fire estimates are not Detroit arson counts
A U.S. Fire Administration report estimated an average of 15,500 fires nationally between Oct. 30 and Nov. 1 over 1996–98. That broad, historical total is not specific to Detroit, abandoned properties or intentional fires, so it should not be read as a measure of the city’s Devil’s Night problem.
