According to a new study published in the Detroit Free Press (article here), while most violent crimes have been declining in the D, murder is on the rise. The DPD has decided to take officers off of desk duty and send them out in the street one day a week. They're going to try to develop "community relations", which is a fancy way of saying that they're searching for people who are willing to be informants.
This isn't an automatic answer to the problem. Informants can only be trusted to the extent that they're getting enough out of the deal to make it worth their time to provide valid information. Those same informants are risking their own lives to work with the DPD, since gang activity is flourishing, and the crack trade is still roaring strong.
Lt. Dwane Blackmon of the Detroit homicide unit was at a public meeting recently, and he indicated that the problem leading to all of these murders was "risky behavior" (see source, here): gang activity, drug dealing, and retaliation. All of those are a source of concern, but for informants, retaliation is obviously a bigger problem than for most people.
The gangs in Detroit are very active. The Vice Lords, Latin Counts, Young Guns and Cash Flow Posse, just to name a few, come and go in these streets, bringing violence, drugs and prostitution with them. It's also seeming increasingly like some of them are also bringing orders from out of town. I'm not in a position yet to say who's calling the shots, but it seems like some local gangs are doing step-and-fetch-it work for bigger players, possibly from New York, possibly from Chicago. And I'm talking big players. National players, players who don't limit themselves to "representing" the 2800 block of some street. The local boys are spending a lot of time nosing around on behalf of their heavy clients, and they seem to be interested in projects that are connected straight back to the City Council.
Are the gangs and the Council both working for the same party? Is someone out there, outside the city, calling the shots? What's the aim? These are just some of the questions that need answers.
I'm not sure what they want, at least not yet. But I'm the Motown Investigator, and I have my eyes on them.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
The view from outside the D: dirty cops and ruin porn
I'm thinking today about this article from the Detroit News: Gang cop's actions cost Detroit $677,000.
I'm most concerned about the comment by Councilman Gary Brown at the end of the article, when he says that Hughes isn't even the worst cop on the force with these sorts of complaints. It begs the question: who's covering up for those guys? If there are other cops pulling even worse violations, then someone somewhere should be talking about it... but they're not.
How much more hush-hush money can this city afford to spend? How many more under-the-table deals will the City Council make before someone with the ability to stop it takes notice? Or maybe there's nobody with any ability to stop anything. That's the most depressing thought of all.
This city can't afford many more settlements like this. We can't afford this many dirty, abusive cops. We can't afford the levels of graft and collusion that have come to be part and parcel of Detroit and its city government. We can't afford it, and yet we keep paying it, year after year after year. And nobody does a damn thing to make a change.
Things have changed in the D. We've all seen it. The world has seen it, since the only tourists we really get these days are nosy Europeans with cameras who come in, spend no money and take out only pictures of the underbelly of the city. It's decay tourism at its worst, foreigners who come in like vultures to pick at a carcass without bothering to take the time to notice that the victim isn't dead yet. These photos, urban ruin porn, even had a featured run in a UK newspaper: the Guardian UK. This isn't the sort of attention this city needs, and it's not even accurate on the whole.
But there's more to Detroit than rotting buildings, violent cops and abusive officials. Time was, and time probably still is, that there were good men and women behind the badge here in this city. There have been and probably still are councilmen and women with good intentions who really do try to serve their constituents more than they serve themselves. The problem is that those people are mostly silent, leaving the city to noisemakers like Hughes, Yves Marchand, Romain Meffre, and yes, even this blogger to point out all the bad that the city has to offer.
I hope that Detroit can get out from under the weight of its own reputation.
This is not lost on me. I'm the Motown Investigator, and I've got my eye on you.
I'm most concerned about the comment by Councilman Gary Brown at the end of the article, when he says that Hughes isn't even the worst cop on the force with these sorts of complaints. It begs the question: who's covering up for those guys? If there are other cops pulling even worse violations, then someone somewhere should be talking about it... but they're not.
How much more hush-hush money can this city afford to spend? How many more under-the-table deals will the City Council make before someone with the ability to stop it takes notice? Or maybe there's nobody with any ability to stop anything. That's the most depressing thought of all.
This city can't afford many more settlements like this. We can't afford this many dirty, abusive cops. We can't afford the levels of graft and collusion that have come to be part and parcel of Detroit and its city government. We can't afford it, and yet we keep paying it, year after year after year. And nobody does a damn thing to make a change.
Things have changed in the D. We've all seen it. The world has seen it, since the only tourists we really get these days are nosy Europeans with cameras who come in, spend no money and take out only pictures of the underbelly of the city. It's decay tourism at its worst, foreigners who come in like vultures to pick at a carcass without bothering to take the time to notice that the victim isn't dead yet. These photos, urban ruin porn, even had a featured run in a UK newspaper: the Guardian UK. This isn't the sort of attention this city needs, and it's not even accurate on the whole.
But there's more to Detroit than rotting buildings, violent cops and abusive officials. Time was, and time probably still is, that there were good men and women behind the badge here in this city. There have been and probably still are councilmen and women with good intentions who really do try to serve their constituents more than they serve themselves. The problem is that those people are mostly silent, leaving the city to noisemakers like Hughes, Yves Marchand, Romain Meffre, and yes, even this blogger to point out all the bad that the city has to offer.
I hope that Detroit can get out from under the weight of its own reputation.
This is not lost on me. I'm the Motown Investigator, and I've got my eye on you.
Monday, July 25, 2011
City Council Backs Public Bridge Project
On July 8, the Detroit City Council announced that it was supporting the public bridge to Canada, the "New International Trade Crossing", or NITC. According to one report, the cost for this bridge sits at right about $3.5 million. That's public money, folks. Government money. You can bet that the Council will be wading right into the bidding process again to find bridge construction companies who want to get fat off the coffers of this bankrupted city.
Bidding processes in Detroit have always been, let's say, creative, especially when Councilman Gordon Hosea Jackson is involved. He's got more friends in the construction and demolition industries than Kwame Kilpatrick has bad debts. It seems strange to this investigator that one of his best buddies has the demolition contract on five different major buildings that are being torn down. These are all old buildings, formerly architectural jewels in Detroit's crown, and they're all being pulled down to make room for... what? Nobody knows. Nobody knows when the bidding process on these demolition jobs got started, either. What people do know is that when the city planning commission had its meetings with Grand River Construction, the company that got the contract (and which happens to be a big contributor to Mr. Jackson's re-election campaign), the doors were closed.
Jackson is preparing for the 2012 elections already, and nobody thinks that he'll be content with staying in the city council. He's got his eyes on the prize, people, looking at Lansing and eventually Washington, D.C. He's got the charisma and the backers to make it. Just check out the long list of fund raisers that are being scheduled in his honor. He's planning a big push in the near future, and for that, he needs lots of cold, hard cash.
It couldn't be more obvious. Jackson and his City Council cronies are just like all the other Detroit politicians who came before them: lining their pockets and the pockets of their friends with money that belongs to all of us. This bridge is going to be just another prime project that'll land in the coffers of Grand River Construction and other campaign donors. Jackson and the Council are corrupt, and they've got their fingers in everybody's pies.
This is not lost on me. I'm the Motown Investigator, and I've got my eye on you.
Bidding processes in Detroit have always been, let's say, creative, especially when Councilman Gordon Hosea Jackson is involved. He's got more friends in the construction and demolition industries than Kwame Kilpatrick has bad debts. It seems strange to this investigator that one of his best buddies has the demolition contract on five different major buildings that are being torn down. These are all old buildings, formerly architectural jewels in Detroit's crown, and they're all being pulled down to make room for... what? Nobody knows. Nobody knows when the bidding process on these demolition jobs got started, either. What people do know is that when the city planning commission had its meetings with Grand River Construction, the company that got the contract (and which happens to be a big contributor to Mr. Jackson's re-election campaign), the doors were closed.
Jackson is preparing for the 2012 elections already, and nobody thinks that he'll be content with staying in the city council. He's got his eyes on the prize, people, looking at Lansing and eventually Washington, D.C. He's got the charisma and the backers to make it. Just check out the long list of fund raisers that are being scheduled in his honor. He's planning a big push in the near future, and for that, he needs lots of cold, hard cash.
It couldn't be more obvious. Jackson and his City Council cronies are just like all the other Detroit politicians who came before them: lining their pockets and the pockets of their friends with money that belongs to all of us. This bridge is going to be just another prime project that'll land in the coffers of Grand River Construction and other campaign donors. Jackson and the Council are corrupt, and they've got their fingers in everybody's pies.
This is not lost on me. I'm the Motown Investigator, and I've got my eye on you.
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