Quote Originally Posted by DetroitPole View Post
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you live in the Potemkin Village that is downtown and midtown?

The problem is the bad areas are virtually THE ENTIRE REST OF THE CITY. Any detached building is generally unsafe. The vast majority of the city is "the 'hood" as you call it. And she wasn't "hanging out"; she wasn't on a street corner. She was in a building. This building was not an after-hours club, drug house, blind-pig, or brothel.

Since we've all decided to shit on Toronto and make the dubious claim that it is somehow like Detroit, in 2007 the homicide rate for the city of Toronto was 3.3 per 100,000 people, yet for Detroit it was 33.8.

I like Detroit; I live in Detroit. Because I like Detroit, I am mad as hell about the crime rate and find it totally unacceptable. I will not make excuses or blame the victim like the rest of the Detroit boosters here.

Way to call her an idiot, by the way. Really classy.
My point has nothing to do with this woman, it goes way beyond this one incident. I feel bad for her if this actually happened. The crime rate is ridiculous and there's no excuse for it, but crime is not a Detroit-specific anomaly, however, the way crime gets reported about Detroit is an anomaly. This city gets trashed, constantly, without any backlash. If this shit had happened in D.C., Baltimore, East St. Louis, South Bronx, Compton, or Chicago's Southside, nobody would ever paint those cities as "3rd world." Whenever anything happens in Detroit, though, even in the worst areas, people are quick to shit all over everything.

BTW, I sure do live in downtown and Midtown, but, no, they are not a "Potemkin Village." Is the Loop in Chicago a Potemkin Village? Perhaps you think every surviving area in Detroit is a fucking Potemkin Village. How about Indian Village? It even has "Village" in the name, so perhaps people that live there aren't REAL Detroiters because their neighborhood isn't blighted enough for you. I suppose I have to live in Brightmoore between an empty lot and a crack house to be considered a true resident of this town.

It's sad that there are places in the world where you can't feel safe alone after dark, but that's just the way it is. If you're a lone woman hanging out in an empty building in East St. Louis in the middle of the night, you're probably also a fool. She should have had someone stay with her if she wanted to stick around at Midnight. It's not like she didn't understand the dangers. She was working with impoverished kids in a sketchy neighborhood and got unlucky that some assholes decided to rob a place they no doubt thought was empty. They had no issue with her. They didn't rough her up, or molest her. They just wanted to get the fucking flat screens and to get the hell out of there.