At one time, I worked in Detroit... and hated it despite being located in the Renaissance Center. The insular surroundings of that fortress-like structure were nice enough, but it was a metaphor for Detroit... a foreboding and forbidding facade [replace with an atrium when GM moved there] facing out against a generally hostile city. Still, this was in the early 1990s and there was still enough left of the city to offer a few reasons to go there.Two decades later, despite the addition of Comerica Park and Ford Field indoor stadium, there has been a feeling of general desperation in that city. There are those destination points for the hardy sports fans, but Detroit is not a destination city.
DETROIT (WWJ) – The men and women of the Detroit Police Department believe the city is too dangerous to enter, and they want citizens to know it.
Detroit Police Officer Association (DPOA) Attorney Donato Iorio said officers are holding the “Enter At Your Own Risk” rally at 3:30 p.m. Saturday in front of Comerica Park to remind the public that the officers are overworked, understaffed, and at times, fearful for their lives.
“Detroit is America’s most violent city, its homicide rate is the highest in the country and yet the Detroit Police Department is grossly understaffed,” Iorio told WWJ’s Kathryn Larson. “The DPOA believes that there is a war in Detroit, but there should be a war on crime, not a war on its officers.” [read more here]This map shows murders, shooting, and suspected murders in Detroit for the past 5 months.
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It doesn't surprise me. I've watched Detroit spiral downward since the early 1970s. It has been inexorable.
You can read the many posts about Detroit here. But this one is a good summary:
TUESDAY, MAY 29, 2012
Why Detroit Is Doomed
You can't fix stupid... and Detroit is full of stupid.
Maybe you can't fix stupid, but there are solutions. The problem is they are not politically-correct solutions. The most obvious is to dissolve the city corporation and reconstitute it in a much smaller version. Detroit is simply unmanageable in its present configuration no matter who is in charge. An emergency manager is a band-aid on a metaphorical gun shot... an appropriate metaphor.
