The next time Mayor Dave Bing faces an audience of Detroiters skeptical about his plans to reconfigure their city into a smaller number of more densely populated, more commercially viable neighborhoods, he should invite Donn Fresard along.

Fresard is a prosecutor -- not just any prosecutor, but the chief of staff for Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy.

But the 14-year-old kid who swiped Fresard's wallet from a table at the Fishbone's restaurant in Greektown last Wednesday didn't know that. To him, Fresard was just another middle-aged guy in a suit, and the wallet on the table was a prize too tempting to resist.

When the kid grabbed the wallet and broke for the exit, he probably figured he'd be out of sight before what happened even registered with Fresard or his fellow diners.

In dozens of other Detroit neighborhoods, the kid might have been figuring right.

But Greektown isn't any neighborhood. It's a 24-hour urban village, a place where a polyglot of people -- casino-goers and diners, cops and judges, janitors and musicians, criminal suspects on their way to the county jail and bail bondsmen on their way to spring them -- share the same sidewalks, restaurants and bars.


Continued at: http://www.freep.com/article/2011032...-critical-mass