American Ruin by Michael Matthews

[renf]

It is troubling that neither the News nor the Freep review the many books that are written about Detroit. I wonder if anyone had comments about American Ruin: Life and Death on the Streets of Detroit- America’ Deadliest City? The author is a British police officer who spent much time on patrol with police officers in Detroit. I expected to read a version of ruin porn but was pleasantly surprised. On the one hand, he describes very clearly the high level of violence in Detroit, much of it linked to the gangs that sell prescription and illegal drugs. On the other hand, he
presents a sympathetic picture of the Detroit police force and credits them with major efforts to reduce
violence in the city. He lucidly describes the challenges Detroit police officers have in trying to minimize crime.

Detroit, incidentally, no longer has the nation’s highest homicide rate. According to the Uniform Crime report, there were 39 homicides per 100,000 residents in 2018 in Detroit. In Baltimore, there were 51 per 100,000.
Nevertheless, homicides are common in Detroit. The homicide rat, in 2018, was 21 per 100,000 in Chicago, 12 per 100,000 in Houston and only 3 per 100,000 in both New York and El Paso.

[rickbak]

I read it this summer and enjoyed it. Matthews did a good job of reporting but not over-sensationalizing things. As far as book reviews in the dailies...those days are long gone [[unless of course the Freep is pimping Albom's latest work). Book sections were just about the first things newspapers around the country dropped as the net took over. If this was 1974 or 1988, Matthews would have been profiled by local features writers and his book would have received in-depth reviews.