Detroit On Its Knees

One day a man asked an old friend how things were going, and the friend replied that, as a matter of fact, he had recently taken up prayer.

Concerned, the first man responded, “Are things as bad as that?”

We’re all for prayer here at DU.  But when the top law enforcement leadership of a dysfunctional city announces that their latest anti-crime initiative is based upon the city’s preachers singing “Nearer My God to Thee,” it’s time to pray about moving. (“Detroit clergy launch prayer walks, youth rallies to counteract crime”).

Oh, hang on.  In the last five home invasion stories I’ve read about the victims had wanted to move, but were too broke -- and their houses too worthless – for them to get out.

Good thing Detroit is coming back!

It’s not that I don’t appreciate U.S. Attorney Barb McQuade’s message to gang members, on behalf of “we the collective,” that “we care about you,” but “you will be prosecuted and put in prison' " if you commit crimes. It’s just that I don’t know why we have to care about gang members first, as if they spray-paint the city’s walls and shoot up each other’s houses because there aren’t enough policemen smiling at them.

And it’s not that I’m so far gone in my faith that I don’t appreciate Reverend Warfield’s solution to Detroit’s crime wave to “pray for and pray with our various neighborhoods."

It’s just that “Operation Ceasefire,” which reportedly “focuses on meeting with young offenders to talk about and provide resources on alternatives to crime,” hasn’t got a thing to say about the complete breakdown of law enforcement protection in Detroit. 

And to make sure that even the level of protection armed Detroiters provide for themselves is even weaker, geniuses in Lansing are trying to repeal the Michigan law allowing victims of violent attacks to defend themselves with lethal force rather than run away -- the former standard -- especially from their own homes. Rep. Tim Bledsoe, Democrat (what else?) thinks “Michigan should return to the old standard because stand-your-ground is "the only law that I can think of that actually promotes violence." (“House Dems seek repeal of Michigan's stand-your-ground law”).

Well, I can think of another law Democrats loooove that promotes violence: Roe v Wade, or what I like to call the Stamp Out Your Offspring Law, but I’m sure Bledsoe is less concerned with protecting infants from parental violence than protecting armed criminals from confrontations with victims who can actually shoot back.

There’s a good reason the announcement of the Operation Outreach initiative never mentions that the Detroit Police Department will play a key role in the “anti-crime” effort, even though half the DPD brass showed up to have their picture taken. And that reason is that the program is how to handle crime now that we’ve all stopped denying that Detroit lacks adequate police protection. 

Item:

Detroit — The body of a Detroit man made it all the way to a funeral home without authorities noticing a gunshot wound on the chest, and now police want to know what happened. (“Gunshot wound goes unnoticed until body arrives at funeral home”).

Now police want to know what happened.

"The DPD's Internal Affairs will be investigating this matter to determine if all departmental procedures and protocols were followed," Sgt. Eren Stephens, a spokeswoman for the department, said Tuesday.

Never mind who shot “59-year-old Leslie Brooks”: there’s a more important meeting of the Keystone Kommission to analyze how a dead body found in Detroit fails to muster enough interest for the cops to hypothesize that foul play might be involved. (“Crimsetoppers Alert! Gunshot wounds to the torso may look innocent, but STAY WATCHFUL for telltale signs of criminal activity!”)

Meanwhile, the DPD has been so busy doing whatever it is they do that they haven’t had time, after 9 years, to fully comply with court-ordered reforms requiring officers to stop engaging in “ex­cessive force, false arrests, il­le­gal de­tentions and unconstitution­al con­ditions of confine­ment.” 

How many years does it take to get the word out to the few officers actually assigned to the street to stop making false arrests? How many years does it take to clean up conditions in jail cells so bad they earn judicial notice as “unconstitutional”?

Until 2003, when the feds stepped in to try to clean it up, the number-one investigative tool employed in Detroit homicide investigations was unlawful dragnets whereby all the neighbors and friends of a victim – including infant babies and old people – were summarily arrested without regard to due process and detained until one of them finally admitted they knew who killed Cookie Head Jenkins.

Sure Dearborn and Detroit needs more good auto jobs – but how about we first get a Bill of Rights?

Am I being too hard on Detroit’s finest? Just possibly. But don’t get me started on what I see as the failings of the DPD going back decades. I’ll only mention the most important failing – that no one in the city seriously believes that the Detroit police protect any one from crime.

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