I'm an 8 year resident of Detroit and have owned a home in Rosedale Park for the past 7 years. I love this City, at least most days. But lately those love the D days are getting fewer and fewer.

My cousin's family is in town from Maryland to visit family in the area. He and his wife came over last night to visit with us while our kids and his had a sleep over at a relative's house in Sterling Heights. We had a good time visiting and before we knew it it was pretty late. So my cousin and his wife decided to crash at our place for the night.

Just after going to sleep we heard a gun fire off about a half dozen shots a block or two away. Great... So much for any attempts at passing off the neighborhood as nice.

We woke up this morning to find the catalytic converter stolen off our car and my cousin's catalytic converter damaged from an unsuccessful attempt at being stolen off his minivan. We have a one car garage so both of us had our vehicles parked on the street in front of my house in Rosedale Park. So instead of our families spending the day at the beach like we had planned and the kids were excited to do, we're now both spending it at the repair shop shelling out several hundred dollars to fix something on our cars that was never broke to begin with.

I don't know how much more I can put up with in this city. Having the car receive several hundred dollars in damage in three separate vandalism incidents, having another car stolen, having the house broken into, having to pay for private school, paying outrageous insurance rates that keep going up, paying taxes for services that I never receive, etc., etc. etc. And this is just the stuff that has directly happened to us over the past few years.

We have neighbors [[yes, in Rosedale Park) who've been robbed at gunpoint, been kidnapped and forced to lead robbers through a ransacking of their house, had rims stolen off their car in broad daylight in their own driveway, had their houses broken into and ransacked after being gone for just 1 hour, etc. all within the past year. I'm pretty close to calling it quits and walking away from the house and moving somewhere where shit like this doesn't happen on a regular basis and the cops actually give a damn about it.