Crime in Recent Weeks/Months... Worse Than "Normal"?

[REL]

It seems more and more, every day, there is another senseless, callous crime being committed. Even my friends [[and several posters on this very site) most devoted to staying in the city are now truly scared for their lives.

This is more than "normal"... I mean, it seems the crimes are occurring with more frequency & evil within the last few months [[even weeks). There is an alarming trend of 'young' offenders & victims.

Examples in recent weeks [[and this is just what made the papers):
12-y/o shoots a woman
21-y/o carjacked & killed, allegedly by 2 teens
17-y/o tries to rob, then gets shot by intended victim
Movie crew mugged [[Then muggers caught! With awesome response time!)
Man beats girlfriend's 3 y/o to DEATH for wetting pants
19-y/o killed in crossfire, an "innocent bystander"
25-y/o accused of fireboming house with HIS OWN 5-y/o, ex-gf, & 2 others inside
19-y/o robs & kills 86-y/o
Repo-man shot 4 times, doing his job
Early 20-something killed over gas station argument
2 shootings on the 18th, one man in the head while sitting in car, other was a 30-y/o woman shot in bicep with glass shattered in her face
24-y/o shot in head in a driveway on Asbury Park

This situation is just out of control, and my heart is breaking. This is a very sincere post: I am not looking to start a flame-war, just mourning the loss of respect for humanity & life here. These victims [[and perps, let's not forget) are someone's son or daughter. What the hell is happening to us??

[Homer]

1. lack of morals, read "Thug Life"
2. state of the economy, no jobs
3. lack of police on the street, slow response time, scum know this.
4. public hangings of felons would help, stockade for petty theft, etc......

[lilpup]

What the hell is happening to us??

The violence of poverty and the rest of the country doesn't give a shit.

[irish_mafia]

Kids with no dads that live on their own rules of thuggery and their welfare moms living at grandmas house
An illiterate population that is unemployable and unable to contribute to their neighborhoods
A decimated police force that is unable to address the demands of this disaster
A land mass that needs to be reduced by 60-70% to properly patrol
An anti-business climate that does not portend better resources for the future
An eradication of the private sector auto industry that was the only business that was ever fawned over in this region and subsidized the bizarrely dysfunctional city

It may seem worse now...wait until next year. There is nothing that has been fundamentally changed that would indicate an uptick on the horizon. [[Unless Mr. Bing has some amazing magic up his sleeve).

[lilpup]

I'll go with the need for Zoloft in the water supply, cuz right now nothing seems important around here anymore.

Even the Tigers leading their division doesn't seem to be generating any local uplift. Hopefully they'll do well in the playoffs and that will change.

[ejames01]

[R8RBOB]

I had tears in my eyes today when I heard about the 19 year old female who was killed because the little b*tch shot at the wrong female. He was trying to shoot at his girlfriend but the girl who was going to WC3 got her bullet instead.

I have no excuses for this disaster that is before us. I remember when I work at DPS and I said to myself that if this was the future [[the kids) then we were doomed. I would go home miserable every single day because I had to witness these kids not learning anything [[no blame is to the teachers because they have one of the worst jobs, believe it.) not respecting authority, hell they attempted to treat me like one of their peers instead of an adult, parents showing no respect to the school staff. I could go on but it is too much to list.

Take heed to my quote. I posted this in a previous thread but it in a nutshell explain the madness that is before us.

"You can't fill an empty gas tank with a empty gas can."

[East Detroit]

Unending war, but nobody cares because there's no draft.

Unending poverty, but nobody cares because Dow Jones is up.

Unending immorality, but nobody cares because it's all about ME and MY anyway.

[terryh]

Ditto East Detroit and Lilpup

[DetroitDad]

This is the result of... oh, nevermind.....

[reddog289]

I have been thinking the same thing.This area is truly messed up.Even in the Burbs I have heard the old saying "If I wouldn't have to give up my house for nothing,I would be outta here".

[Pcm]

Even the Tigers leading their division doesn't seem to be generating any local uplift. Hopefully they'll do well in the playoffs and that will change.

Tigers a big source of pride in Motown

Detroit's rally around team in tough times harkens to 1968

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?...=.jsp&c_id=mlb

[Dave70]

Kids with no dads that live on their own rules of thuggery and their welfare moms living at grandmas house
An illiterate population that is unemployable and unable to contribute to their neighborhoods

I wonder what percentage of the population is like this and how the hell can that be fixed??

[gravitymachine]

shit is bad no doubt, but year long crime stats usually peak in late summer/august as well if i recall...

[pffft]

One reason to welcome fall...

[SWMAP]

As a resident of SW DetroitI have been reading some of these recent stories with personal concern. It appears that guns are now pretty common in the Detroit teen-age community. Seventeen year-olds are now riding around on bikes with guns. Twelve-year-olds have guns. And they are probably more willing to use them then older, more mature B&E men and robbers.

I can't think of an end to this. Won't it reach a tipping point in which more kids have guns than not?

Kym Worthy says that kids with cell phones fuel this violence and that they shouldn't be allowed in school. Parents reply that kids need their phones for safety reasons. I think soon parents will be defending that their kids have guns. it doesn't seem far-fetched anymore.

As to other crime: the fire engine sirens are nearly constant now in my neighborhood. Morning and night the engines are racing around. I think of the NYT article of 20 years ago: "Is Detroit burning" and recall what a debacle that was for the city - and that was just one night [[Devil's Night). Now Detroit really is burning and what can be done?

[Lowell]

Care needs to be taken to differentiate between an uptick in high profile crimes [we have definitely seen that] and an actual increase in crime.

We could be having both or, it is possible, we are having an increase in sensational 'headline' crimes while the actual number of crimes is decreasing.

So the answer to this thread's question is: we can't know.

On to the big question. Can anything be done that isn't already being attempted?

My answer, if I could pull the rabbit out of the hat, would be to unify the metropolitan public safety forces. A sizeable chunk of that total force [including federal, state and county as well], is essentially getting cats out of trees and busting kids for pot. That is a deliberate exaggeration, but it is true that there are many 'peaceful' areas from which 'troops' could be spared and redeployed to high crime areas and sent marching "toward the sound of fire." A singular metropolitan force could enable such a distribution of force.

For public consumption, the distressed areas should be re-branded as terrorist strongholds and dealt with the same concern and expense being applied 10000 miles away in Afghanistan. Every crime should those zones be investigated by detectives and rewards offered for apprehension of every violent criminal. The forces and means to resolve the criminal situation are present. What seems to be missing is the will. "Oh, it's their problem" needs to be replaced with "It's our problem."

[Bobl]

"...Care needs to be taken to differentiate between an uptick in high profile crimes [we have definitely seen that] and an actual increase in crime..."

This reminds me of an incident that I witnessed, over thirty years ago, while working at a building across the street from the old Aero Mechanics Vocational High School, near City Airport.
3:00 AM. We were sitting in front of the building on Irwin, backs against the brick wall, eating our lunches while working the midnight shift. Two young boys on bicycles were being followed by a group of stray dogs. One of the youths stopped, stepped off the bike, and fired several shots at the dogs. Pieces of pavement were hitting the wall behind us. The shooter looked to be about 14 or 15 years old.
It is likely that the shooter is now a grandfather. What kind of guidance has he given to his children and grandchildren? We'll never know.
In today's scenario, it seems as though he might be shooting us, rather than the dogs!

[NoHeartAnthony]

Tigers a big source of pride in Motown

Detroit's rally around team in tough times harkens to 1968

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?...=.jsp&c_id=mlb

Black people don't like baseball.

[ejames01]

Baseball might not be the favorite sport, but to say that we don't like it is silly.

Black people don't like baseball.

[R8RBOB]

Black people don't like baseball.

I like baseball and I love the Wire too.

[NoHeartAnthony]

I'm just sick of people thinking the Tigers will cheer up the city. Even if we won the WS, it's temporary excitement. You still wake up the next morning with the same circumstances that you had before.

[R8RBOB]

I'm just sick of people thinking the Tigers will cheer up the city. Even if we won the WS, it's temporary excitement. You still wake up the next morning with the same circumstances that you had before.

Can't dispute that....

[staticstate]

do what the English did...ship all the problem cases off to Australia. It may take a few hundred years, but eventually they'll figure it out and become a productive society.

[7051]

SWMAP,

We don't seem to be much busier in your neighborhood than in the past [[in reference to fires). All of the new ambulances have the same wining/wailing sirens as our fire trucks-this is a major change from their old sirens. In my neighborhood [[near a hospital), I have to remind myself that what I am hearing then seeing are ambulances not firetrucks at all hours.

We are busier per firefighter the last 4 years since we have considerably less ff's in the dept and less engines/trucks and firefighters on a daily basis. Our total run numbers seem to be on pace for less than 30,000 runs this year[[about 27-28k). It seems we have been between 30-34k runs per year for the last 25 years. Actual fire runs are hard to say, because it is harder to find the detailed numbers the last 5 years. These were always readily available in the past [[somwhere between 7-12k fires per year including structures, cars, trash, etc.)

Like I mentioned earlier, we definitely have a higher workload per firefighter than 5 years ago and we still [[by far) have the highest fire rate in the country. We do in 2 weeks what a NYC/Chicago firefighter does in 1 year concerning structure fires. This is not an exageration, just ask any truthful firefighter in those cities how many structure fires they personally respond to in a day or 1-2 weeks. They will usually correct you with how many they respond to in a year which is closer to our biweekly figure.