Here is the premise from years ago

Free Press April 9, 2005
http://www.freep.com/voices/editoria...e_20050409.htm


Fortress Warren
Mayor Steenbergh wants to wall out neighborliness

Perhaps someday soon, travelers going north on Van Dyke, Mound
or Dequindre will encounter "Checkpoint Steenbergh"
at 8 Mile Road, with a sign:

Entering Fortress Warren
Please have ID ready

That would seem to suit Warren Mayor Mark Steenbergh, who certainly did nothing to advance regional cooperation and race relations in a State of the City speech Thursday that resurrected decades-old race-based stereotypes about neighboring Detroit.

"I consider us to be Fortress Warren," Steenbergh said in a plea for a tax increase to avoid police layoffs. "We are a fortress standing against the growth of crime coming at us from the south. I want to maintain the kind of police presence that is a real threat to anyone who wants to come here to commit a crime."

One need not even read between the lines to hear what Steenbergh is saying: Detroit, which borders Warren on the south, harbors criminals who, given the chance, would charge across the line to assault and otherwise violate Warren residents.

Be afraid, be very afraid. Steenbergh's comment is not only an affront to Detroiters, but an insult to people in Warren who have been burdened with their own stereotype for too long.

Although Warren has in recent years attracted some of the thousands of African Americans who have moved out of Detroit, it remains 91-percent white and a city that has long had a reputation for making blacks feel unwelcome. Warren officials are among the most vocal critics of their Detroit counterparts.

In 1997, Steenbergh was acquitted of ethnic intimidation for attacking a black teenager who he said was menacing a family friend. In 2000, the Michigan NAACP decided to hold its statewide conference in Warren to deliberately challenge the city's perceived view of minorities.