Horrible Violence in Detroit Today

[canuck]

What brought it down in New York, which had well over 2,000 murders a year, close to Detroit levels? People differ about that, but few would argue that the combination of close community policing and a crackdown on "threshold" crimes, such as the notorious squeegee men, didn't have a lot to do with it. It could be done here; they just need the will. Start busting the gang bangers for breaking bottles on the ground, and they will commit the serious crimes less often.

I think New York City started cracking down on all crimes and misdemeanors for one thing. If you browse streetview, you can see how the city is cleaner than 20-30 years ago. The city hands down heavy fines for poster violations for instance. They do not tolerate the multiple handbill posters stuck to lightpoles anywhere. The result is that it is less chaotic and dirty a city now. No grafitti on Subway trains also goes a long way to keeping sane. Used to be the cars were so dirty and painted, that you couldnt see through the windows on a lot of the trains. So yes, you need to tolerate less of the small acts of vandalism and theft and what not to stem crime in the bud. We had a bus shelter
in front of a high school two houses down from me that was constantly vandalised. The kids would break the whole set of tempered glass panes every couple of months on average. Finally, after years of paying a crew to put in new ones, they decided to get rid of it altogether, which means older folks wont be using it in bad weather.

[coracle]

If the perps are remaining with their community in the D this is positive news for the suburbs 401don. But it also guarentees that at least 400 individuals alive today in Detroit will be murdered by this time next year [[unless they get out now).

As for the current crop of 7 murders it isn't guns or laws or poverty or whatever that is to blame; it's 100% the fault of the trigger pulling murderers.

[English]

"It's the fault of the murderers." Yes, I totally agree. We have been saying this for 40 years. No, we have been saying this for as long as there has been a criminal justice system... how long have humans lived in civilizations?

It is 110% true that a gun murder is almost always the trigger-puller's fault [[once in a while they discharge accidentally). However, having acknowledged that, what's the next step? How do you stop it?

How do you stop someone who will kill without thinking from moving next door to you -- no matter where you live? Because -- let's be real -- how many more decades will it be before no one lives in these blighted Detroit neighborhoods, and will move elsewhere?

How do you change the mentality of the murderers? Unless you can answer that question, continued analysis of the problem is not a solution. We've beat this horse skeleton to death. So what do we do?

[English]

A poster points out that a reason that Windsor, with the same economic issues as Detroit has no comparable level of violence might be the universality of health benefits. Yet, the London rooters have similar benefits AND free or heavily- subsidized housing. Still they rioted. Now government is considering canceling the housing benefit for anyone involved in future violence - and their families would be kicked out too.
I think Windsor is just a small town where everybody knows each other. If you get into trouble people shame you. Here, in a big city - violence and even anarchy is a badge of honor. The rioters of 1967 have been excused by history: it was tough for them and so we have decided that they were acting reasonably and society was to blame. But people know in their hearts who ruined the City. That riot destroyed neighborhoods and an economy that never came back. I do think London will come back - but Detroit wasn't one of the financial capitals of the world.

Completely ahistorical analysis of the 1967 riots. What do you make of other cities that had terrible riots almost 50 years ago but have come back and are thriving? The 1960s and 1970s underclass in those places was little different than that in Detroit. They came from the same racial and socioeconomic roots and were dealing with the same problems and frustrations.

However, unlike in Detroit, the middle class in most other cities that had major riots in the mid-to-late 1960s didn't get frightened and run away from their homes. Detroit's the only major city where that happened...

So what are the solutions? Are we going to continue to say that it's not our problem because of where we live, our ethnic group, or our socioeconomic class affiliation? Or is this everyone's problem?

[R8RBOB]

Working for DPS for a few months back in 2004-05, I saw the future of Detroit through the children that I would encounter each day as I visited the schools through Detroit and in many instances I saw the same thing over and over. A horrible future for Detroit.

A horrible future because these kids have evolved to the level of predators. Since they lack the educational tools to be a productive citizen they have accepted the reality that they will have to sell dope or take what's yours. These kids are growing up angrier and angrier and we are the enemy. That said, these shooting are the result of people having beef with each other. Yes, there will be a random act of violence but shootings in Detroit is typically shooter knows victim and bang bang.

[Gannon]

At least the Freep isn't REALLY talking about what happened with this weekend. What an absolute waste of space on their e-front page today. They lapse into some other events in June in this article...

http://www.freep.com/article/20110813/NEWS01/110813021/A-day-s-gunfire-Detroit-15-people-shot-including-6-dead?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE


Making it sound like the most dangerous thing you can do in this city is have a graduation party or reunion. What kind of bullshit is THAT?!


Of course, Godbee gets the last word in...gotta insure everyone knows how compassionate he is, right?!

"Every loss of life we take very seriously," Godbee said at the time. "But when the actions of adults, in a very irresponsible way, result in the death of a 3-year-old child who hasn’t had an opportunity to experience life, we are literally outraged, and there has to be an outrage in the community relative to this type of crime."

Who defines how this outrage is delivered? Who's to say the culture doesn't merely return the favor in lead, instead?! I mean, after DECADES of police non-response, many people in the city defer to vigilanti justice.

<sigh>


I don't know where the solution lies...somehow the value of life has to be raised in this damn town.

Sincerely,
John

[English]

"No Jobs, No Hope" That's not an excuse, but still....... And the jobs that are available nobody can support a family on.

Now, this begins to point toward some of the root causes.

Another is the drug war. I agree that we ought to legalize drugs. That won't stop the black market entirely, but the War on Drugs is another dead horse skeleton. [[It will never happen because there are too many supposedly LEGIT interests who are making too much money off illegal drugs and the "war.")

Another is about mental and emotional health. I posted in the thread about the stolen GPS about the low-grade PTSD caused by growing up in Detroit, and was completely ignored. Many of you didn't grow up in the city during the crack years and afterward. I did. Seeking inner healing -- mental, physical, and spiritual -- has changed my life. But I didn't get the time, the money, or the inclination to do so until I left Detroit. When I was here, I thought there was nothing wrong.

Murder is definitely not normal, but neither are kids growing up in the ways that so many children in Detroit do. I was a decent kid with great parents, and I was a little nuts. My friends in adulthood have helped me understand the ways that I sequester myself and am too hypervigilant. I've had to learn how to trust people, not to have a hair trigger, and to deal with conflict in a positive and productive way.

So if those of us who had decent folks and families, and were educated in OK Detroit schools were affected by the environment we grew up in... what the heck do you think people who had to deal with hellish homes, families, neighborhoods, and schools are going to be like? There are some folks in SE Michigan who have more compassion for tortured animals than tortured people.

Detroiters don't just need more education. They don't just need people wagging fingers in their faces. They need people to guide them toward a completely different way of life. Right now, they have a choice between what they see all around them and the empty, disgusting, soulless culture that is available via the corporate media. Until we figure it out, this will continue... or even escalate.

[English]

Working for DPS for a few months back in 2004-05, I saw the future of Detroit through the children that I would encounter each day as I visited the schools through Detroit and in many instances I saw the same thing over and over. A horrible future for Detroit.

A horrible future because these kids have evolved to the level of predators. Since they lack the educational tools to be a productive citizen they have accepted the reality that they will have to sell dope or take what's yours. These kids are growing up angrier and angrier and we are the enemy. That said, these shooting are the result of people having beef with each other. Yes, there will be a random act of violence but shootings in Detroit is typically shooter knows victim and bang bang.

This evolution of the underclass didn't happen in a vacuum. Unless and until Detroiters [[and Americans) admit this, this will not only continue, but it will be coming to a neighborhood near you.

Yes, things will get worse. We are not serious at all about figuring out why our society is broken. Instead, we think that because our kids aren't the ones being shot to death, things are OK... until they're not.

It's not our fault, really. America is a nation that isn't very reflective, that is ahistorical, and that tends to live in the right now. We don't look behind us or at our trajectory to understand the current moment.

Drastic times call for drastic measures. What are the solutions?

[Gannon]

Working for DPS for a few months back in 2004-05, I saw the future of Detroit through the children that I would encounter each day as I visited the schools through Detroit and in many instances I saw the same thing over and over. A horrible future for Detroit.

A horrible future because these kids have evolved to the level of predators. Since they lack the educational tools to be a productive citizen they have accepted the reality that they will have to sell dope or take what's yours. These kids are growing up angrier and angrier and we are the enemy. That said, these shooting are the result of people having beef with each other. Yes, there will be a random act of violence but shootings in Detroit is typically shooter knows victim and bang bang.

Yeah, but to counter that...while helping an old high school acquaintance who has now grown into a friend put on the talent show at the end of the year at SouthWestern High School...I came away with the EXACT opposite impression. All of the children I encountered were engaging, honoring authority, polite [[often to the extreme), well-spoken [[don't anyone DARE take that as anything more than an honest compliment), and, fun to be around. Yes, they were mostly the ones IN the talent show...but I met a few more during the weeks leading up to it. Security wasn't very tight, either, the whole feeling of the school was NOT what I expected, from what I'd heard in the past.

They had an issue with the assembly, where some troublemakers were trying to organize a group boo of one student who was gay...but it never happened. The talent show went right up to the edge of bedlam...but the young adults kept it in line. It ended up being a great time, and I feel a few of these children really have futures in entertainment.

It was very encouraging.

Cheers,
John

[Gannon]

Now, this begins to point toward some of the root causes.

Another is the drug war. I agree that we ought to legalize drugs. That won't stop the black market entirely, but the War on Drugs is another dead horse skeleton. [[It will never happen because there are too many supposedly LEGIT interests who are making too much money off illegal drugs and the "war.")

Another is about mental and emotional health. I posted in the thread about the stolen GPS about the low-grade PTSD caused by growing up in Detroit, and was completely ignored. Many of you didn't grow up in the city during the crack years and afterward. I did. Seeking inner healing -- mental, physical, and spiritual -- has changed my life. But I didn't get the time, the money, or the inclination to do so until I left Detroit. When I was here, I thought there was nothing wrong.

Murder is definitely not normal, but neither are kids growing up in the ways that so many children in Detroit do. I was a decent kid with great parents, and I was a little nuts. My friends in adulthood have helped me understand the ways that I sequester myself and am too hypervigilant. I've had to learn how to trust people, not to have a hair trigger, and to deal with conflict in a positive and productive way.

So if those of us who had decent folks and families, and were educated in OK Detroit schools were affected by the environment we grew up in... what the heck do you think people who had to deal with hellish homes, families, neighborhoods, and schools are going to be like? There are some folks in SE Michigan who have more compassion for tortured animals than tortured people.

Detroiters don't just need more education. They don't just need people wagging fingers in their faces. They need people to guide them toward a completely different way of life. Right now, they have a choice between what they see all around them and the empty, disgusting, soulless culture that is available via the corporate media. Until we figure it out, this will continue... or even escalate.

Honey, I don't know about anyone else, but I didn't IGNORE you on that other thread...I was over-whelmed. You put ME at a loss for words...trying to grapple with the person I met at the picnic, and read faithfully here whenever I see you post...reconciling that with your words was tough. Your inner work must've been successful, because your spirit shines freely. If your post could do that to my verbose and unfiltered self...


So, I'll reply to this one. I HEAR you, and am trying to understand. My little comparison is the way I am at my partner's house in GPP. I'm always expecting something to happen here, and am at a total LOSS how this damn neighborhood can be so much like Stepford...less than two blocks from some of the worst neighborhoods I've ever driven through in the city. I just don't get it, unless there are some spiritual forces at work that we are not recognizing yet.


Sincerely,
John

[SWMAP]

English, you are an academic. Look up the Vanderbilt study on the economic and demographic fates of the cities with major riots in the 1960's. The conclusion is that those cities that saw the worst rioting all saw substantial economic decline in black neighborhoods from which they had not recovered years later: Los Angeles [[Watts); Newark and Detroit. I'm on a phone now and can't quote but the middle class in Atlantic City did go. And Watts is still an island.
Anyway, no good came of the severe 1960's riots and those cities are significantly worse off instead of economically improved 40 years on.

[Meddle]

Oddly enough, the French may have had a decent idea with French Guyana. Ship anyone convicted of an intentional gun death to a remote island with few or no facilities for life. One way ticket, no return.

Pretty much the same with Britain and how they initially used Australia.

[R8RBOB]

I must apologize because I did run across those kids who were respectful and mindful and I did the typical lump them all in one crowd. That's not right because we have experience this very thing with the races.

Quick story. I was at Finney on one of my visits and I was in this room doing inventory on the computers and the teacher had a group of students to do clean up in the room. The students were in there talking mad shit and I was in the room. An adult mind you. When I was growing up, we were brought up not to cuss around grown folk. Well these kids were cussing up a storm and one young lady was silent. One of her classmates asked her why she isn't talking and she said; "I'm not talking like that. There is a grown man in this room." Well, my faith was restored because there are still decent parents in the city of Detroit and they are raising their children the right way. All the schools, I visited, I heard stuff that made my hair stand straight and yet this one girl acknowledged that she had to give my respect as an adult. My own fear is that the good ones will get devoured by the predators and our best hope for the future will be gone.

[R8RBOB]

This evolution of the underclass didn't happen in a vacuum. Unless and until Detroiters [[and Americans) admit this, this will not only continue, but it will be coming to a neighborhood near you.

Yes, things will get worse. We are not serious at all about figuring out why our society is broken. Instead, we think that because our kids aren't the ones being shot to death, things are OK... until they're not.

It's not our fault, really. America is a nation that isn't very reflective, that is ahistorical, and that tends to live in the right now. We don't look behind us or at our trajectory to understand the current moment.

Drastic times call for drastic measures. What are the solutions?

I agree with. The greatest challenge in life is staying focus. Sometimes when you get what you want, you get lax and when you get lax, you start to slip. We got lax as a society and basically told the children to fend for themselves. Now, we know children need guidance but we thought that they could learn this on their own.

Back to my comment. When I looked in the eyes of those kids and saw a dark future for Detroit, I also acknowledge that "We" were responsible for this. All of those who came before these children and left them with no other options. We can blame the parents but the children are our future and we stood on the sidelines and watched the regression from a distance.

[socks_mahoney]

Twas the day long full mooned night
in the fair city on the strait.
Pagan spirits mixing with
kapital's despair
9 bled
6 dead.
and ourselves to blame.

[Gannon]

Oddly enough, the French may have had a decent idea with French Guyana. Ship anyone convicted of an intentional gun death to a remote island with few or no facilities for life. One way ticket, no return.

Pretty much the same with Britain and how they initially used Australia.

Well, which do you think would be best for us, then?


Not Belle Isle...nor Grosse Isle...perhaps we take Boblo from the Canadians, then? Or operate some mutual combined trust?

And don't say Zug, that would be cruel and unusual punishment...unconstitutional.


J

[Meddle]

Well, which do you think would be best for us, then?

Dunno. It would have to be at last 100 miles out to sea with no communications access and few, if any buildings. Air drop food once a month. If it turns tribal, so be it.

[Gannon]

Other than Russell Crowe, Australia seems to have turned out OK.

[Gannon]

Then again...there's Georgia. Go figure.

[Gannon]

Also, Detroit's new prison should be in Copper Harbor. Good luck keeping in touch with your gang-banger friends up there.

I dunno, Kwhyme was able to sneak a phone into his cell in the UP.

[Lt. Dan Bassett]

Twas the day long full mooned night
in the fair city on the strait.
Pagan spirits mixing with
kapital's despair
9 bled
6 dead.
and ourselves to blame.

last-stage capitalism explained in 7 short lines. thanks. bravo. now what? I like what G.L. Boggs has to say about growing our souls in her new book.

[canuck]

In time everything just got more complicated. The myths that accompany american independance, progress, industry, colonization and dominance all include a part of necessary violence. People the world over suck up the kind of mythmaking that helped steamroll or maintain certain folks in their place both at home and abroad. A lot of the violence the communists meted out on their conquered territories was also done by the US to populations in the US or abroad. When the black population finally accessed civil rights and right up to a black president, the cities that had been abandoned and the ghettoes with little openness to the world at large had in fact become worse not better. The myth of violence and domination is a perpetual passion play in american cities and I agree with those who mention other cities in the same league as Detroit. Detroit had a whole other set of variables that messed up its outcome. But there are cities like Baltimore where the black and white divide seems even more wicked.

[English]

Thanks, guys, for your replies.

OK, so I'm home from church now. My pastor talked about the murders.

He also talked about a neighborhood street fair yesterday. There were two young black men who were waiting on him -- and they were almost desperate to help him set up. They were there before he was, he said, and they stayed until everyone was gone.

My pastor said he thanked them.

"No problem, man," they told him. "If we needed the help, I am sure that someone would help us out, too."

The young men from the 'hood came to wait for him less than two hours after the last in the string of murders. It was a day of death, and here these youth were, wanting to affirm community and life.

What will it take? It begins with me. I have been guilty of assuming the very worst about white people, about rich people, and about people who looked down on Detroit. I talk about "my community" and I mean "Detroit" or "Black people" because I was raised to think of others as outsiders... as recently as this spring, I was yelled at by a fellow professional of color who told me [[we were a bit tipsy) that "those people will ALWAYS hate you -- they will never stop trying to destroy you!"

Well, perhaps that is true. But that kind of mentality will destroy humanity. We are destroying the planet and depleting our resources, but because of our religious, ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic conflicts all over the globe, we don't have the ability to address our existential threat.

Of course, I haven't killed or physically harmed anyone, but I have wounded plenty of folks with my written and spoken words. I have chosen division instead of unity. I have chosen indifference over love. So I can learn how to listen [[not just talk), which is a challenge. I can be more patient. I can trust and give. I can learn how to love.

Last semester, I began my course on language education with this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7AWnfFRc7g

Right now, this is where I am heading in my personal and professional journey. This has been a long process of deprogramming from everything that I previously believed...

I just purchased Rifkin's The Empathic Civilization from the Source Booksellers on Willis. This is the only way that I see forward -- but to get there, I don't see any way around radical social transformation.

I think that we can bridge the divide here in Detroit. In fact, if we figure things out -- and not with more money, and not with excusing unexcusable behavior, but doing what folks like Cub, Eleanor Josaitis, and so many of our community and neighborhood leaders are quietly doing -- Detroit can go from being the pariah of the world to being a light in the world.

What would be compelling enough to get kids [[and some adults) in this city to lay down their guns, beat their swords into plowshares, and study war no more?

[MidTownMs]

There is no outrage in Detroit over what is going on. Ralph Godbee has no control over his department, not enough soldiers to go out and get these thugs and drug dealers off the streets.

He's right when he says the following:

"Detroit, we failed miserably. This is our fault."

"Black men in our community, what the hell is wrong with us?"

"If these were white men coming into our community from Oakland county and killing all our people, would we be outraged enough to stand up and do anything?"

"We see African American men killing African American men in our community every day, and it's almost as if we expect that here."

It's expected, it's accepted, it's ignored, it's a part of everyday life in Detroit. God help you in Detroit and God help the suburbs because it's already moving here.

God help us all!!!

[ct_alum]

One of the reasons the homicide rate is so high is that there is only a 30% chance that anyone will even be arrested for the crime let alone convicted and everyone knows it. Competent investigators who actually know how to investigate crimes and do it instead of worrying about their wardrobe and illegally detaining witnesses would be a start. Assignments based on competence and not "hook-ups" would go a long way also - Ever read a Request for Warrant that some of these "Investigators" have submitted? LMAO.