The grass isn't always greener on the other side.
Life After White People.
Law and order no longer remain.
Life After White People.
A land where only madness reigns.
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| Detroit, 2014? |
Seriously. If you remove the lifeline of federal and state financial support, Detroit would look like something out of Black Hawk Down. Well, even with this aid, the remains of the Motor City is simultaneously a glimpse at America's Atlantis, a lost city whose greatness can only be spoken about through the eerie silence of photography and the decaying remains of civilization, and America's Mogadishu. Just read this story from Time magazine in 2009, about the last White City Council Member, Sheila Murphy Cockrel:
But in some ways, Cockrel is a relic of Detroit's past. She is the only white member of the city council and, when her term ends in late December, she could well be its last. Even though she is personally popular, she is leaving the council partly because she is tired of the scandals that have rocked the city lately. Her departure is a significant moment in the history of Detroit, the largest majority-black city in America. In the 1950s, when Detroit's population reached its 2 million peak, nearly 1.6 million white people lived here. In 1990, though whites were still represented in several major elected posts, they comprised only about 20% of the population. Now, whites make up barely 8% of the city's estimated 912,000 residents.Detroit is Actual Black Run America (ABRA) and but a few generations removed from being "the Arsenal of Democracy," Detroit has become a living, breathing representation of the type of Black History you'll never learn about during the month of February.
The police have lost control of Detroit, giving up on patrolling 20 percent of the city. Who knows... the coming months could see an emergency call placed to the National Guard - just like in 1967 during the Black Riots - in a last ditch effort to bring peace and some form of stability to the city.
Those few remaining Black professionals still clinging to some semblance of law and order - specifically in Palmer Woods area of Detroit - have turned to Recon Security (a paramilitary organization) to keep them safe, paying tribute a legal type of warlord in exchange for peace:
A Detroit neighborhood association has brought in high-profile private security patrols with paramilitary-style personnel to help fight crime.For those Black Detroit residents - still smarting from the failed 2004 attempt to create "Africa Town" in downtown Detroit, which would have earmarked city money to the tune of $38 million specifically for Black entrepreneurs - without the monetary ability to pay for private paramilitary squads to patrol their streets, an ancient form of justice is flourishing in a city where the absence of police has created a vacuum for power:
The Palmer Woods Association in March hired Detroit-based Recon Security, which is owned by a Highland Park police lieutenant, the Detroit Free Press reported Monday. The decision followed a rash of break-ins and property crimes in the upscale neighborhood.
The neighborhood association has been working with the city to limit traffic access through the neighborhood as part of efforts to reduce crime. The association also works with police to improve security and says the patrols are another way to reach that goal.
Recon Security's Threat Management Division patrols the neighborhood and stops nonresidents to make sure they have legitimate business or a connection to residents. If they see suspicious or criminal behavior, Recon Security's staff members call police.
The patrols include a black Hummer H2 pickup rolling through the area. On the front doors, a silver seal reads: "THREAT MANAGEMENT SPECIALISTS DETERRENCE DETECTION DEFENSE." Inside, Dale Brown patrols wearing camouflage pants and combat boots.
"You can create a positive environment for families to exist," said Brown, 42, who served in the Army in the early 1990s.
Brown is part of Recon Security's Threat Management Division, a partnership between Recon Security, owned by Highland Park Police Lt. Robert Howard, and Brown's Threat Management Centers. Howard describes the division as something similar to a SWAT team.
Karoy Brooks, a retired Detroit Public Schools principal who has lived in Palmer Woods for 25 years, was among those initially apprehensive about the patrols.
"I had some questions, and I was wondering how the neighbors would react," she said. "I think everybody's definitely on board."
The people of Detroit are taking no prisoners.How long will it be until a form of Somali
Justifiable homicide in the city shot up 79 percent in 2011 from the previous year, as citizens in the long-suffering city armed themselves and took matters into their own hands. The local rate of self-defense killings now stands 2,200 percent above the national average. Residents, unable to rely on a dwindling police force to keep them safe, are fighting back against the criminal scourge on their own. And they’re offering no apologies.
“We got to have a little Old West up here in Detroit. That’s what it’s gonna take,” Detroit resident Julia Brown told The Daily.
The last time Brown, 73, called the Detroit police, they didn’t show up until the next day. So she applied for a permit to carry a handgun and says she’s prepared to use it against the young thugs who have taken over her neighborhood, burglarizing entire blocks, opening fire at will and terrorizing the elderly with impunity.
“I don’t intend to be one of their victims,” said Brown, who has lived in Detroit since the late 1950s. “I’m planning on taking one out.”
How it got this bad in Detroit has become a point of national discussion. Violent crime settled into the city’s bones decades ago, but recently, as the numbers of police officers have plummeted and police response times have remained distressingly high, citizens have taken to dealing with things themselves.
In this city of about 700,000 people, the number of cops has steadily fallen, from about 5,000 a decade ago to fewer than 3,000 today. Detroit homicides — the second-highest per capita in the country last year, according to the FBI — rose by 10 percent in 2011 to 344 people.
On a bleak day in January, a group of funeral directors wearied by the violence drove a motorcade of hearses through the city streets in protest.
Average police response time for priority calls in the city, according to the latest data available, is 24 minutes. In comparable cities across the country, it is well under 10 minutes.
Citizens like Brown feel they have been left with little choice but to take the law into their own hands.
The number of justifiable homicides, in which residents use deadly force in self-defense, jumped from 19 in 2010 to 34 last year — a 79 percent rise — according to newly released city data.
Signs that vigilantism was taking hold in the city came earlier, around Memorial Day 2009, when former federal agent Alvin Davis decided he’d had enough of the break-ins at his mother’s home on the east side. She called the police again and again, but the brazen robberies continued. Davis, then a 32-year-old Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, snapped.
Prosecutors said he spent days chasing and harassing the teenagers who were allegedly robbing his mother, even shoving his federally issued firearm into one of their mouths. No one was killed, but by the time he was done, Davis had racked up charges of unlawful imprisonment and assault. In August 2010, he was convicted and sentenced to four years in prison.
But many residents in his mother’s Jefferson-Chalmers neighborhood are sympathetic to Davis, whose case is on appeal.
“He basically did what a lot of us wished we could do,” said Ken Gray, 58, who lives down the street from Davis’ mother.
One high-ranking official in the county legal system, speaking to The Daily, said the rise in justifiable homicides mirrors a local court system that’s increasingly lenient of the practice.
“It’s a lot more acceptable now to get your own retribution,” the official said. “And the justice system in the city is a lot more understanding if people do that. It‘s becoming a part of the culture.”
Detroiters are arming themselves with shotguns and handguns and buying guard dogs. Anything to take care of their own. And privately, residents say neighborhood watch groups in Detroit are widely armed.
“It’s like the militiamen who stepped up way back when. That’s where the neighborhood folks are," said James “Jackrabbit” Jackson, a 63-year-old retired Detroit cop who has patrolled the Jefferson-Chalmers neighborhood for years.
“They’re ready to fight,” Jackson said. “We don’t hardly see police anymore.”
The city’s wealthier enclaves have hired private security firms. Intimidating men in armored trucks patrol streets lined with gracious old homes in a scene more likely seen in Mexico City than the United States.
That kind of paid protection can run residents anywhere from $10 to $200 per month, and companies say business is good.
“We’re booming,” said Dale Brown, the owner of Threat Management Group, which along with Recon Security patrols neighborhoods like Palmer Woods in black Hummers.
“We’re paramilitary, but we’re positive. I’m not a vigilante. I’m an agent of change.”
The Detroit Police Department, grappling with deep funding cuts in a city with a spiraling budget crisis, acknowledges that response times are high and says it is working on a plan to lower them. But a spokeswoman for the department insists the rise in justifiable homicides is unrelated.
“It’s not about police response time because often the act has already taken place by the time the police are called,” said Sgt. Eren Stephens. She said citizens have a right to defend themselves.
“Anytime a life is lost, we’re concerned,” she said. “But we can‘t be on every corner in front of every home. And we know that there are citizens who will do what they have to do to protect themselves.”
That’s the terrifying position in which Kevin Early found himself in November when he was held up at gunpoint outside his home in the upper-middle-class Rosedale Park area. Neighbors called the police, but it was 25 minutes before an officer arrived.
Early, the director of the criminal justice studies program at the University of Michigan’s Dearborn campus, reasoned with the men for more than 20 minutes before he sensed they were about to shoot him in the head — then he ran. As his attackers fled in the opposite direction, neighbors emerged from the street’s stately homes with shotguns.
“All I could think of was my daughter coming home,” Early said. “I didn’t want her to see me shot dead.”
Weeks later, Early packed up his home and left Detroit. He hired Threat Management to supervise the move.
“Where else do the police come to your house after you’ve been robbed and ask you, ‘Why did you call us?
A man and woman died in a house fire in Detroit on Saturday night that was caused by extension cord misuse, fire officials said today.
The blaze at Burlingame and 12th broke out around 9 p.m. Firefighters called for help from police when extended family and neighborhood residents insisted on entering the home, said Detroit Fire Arson Investigator Patrick McNulty.
“It was an ugly scene,” McNulty said, adding that close to 100 police officers were there when he arrived at 9:45 p.m. “The firemen felt like they were close to turning the water on people. They’re outnumbered. There were a lot of people out there. And once police arrived, things calmed down pretty quick.”
Dan McNamara, head of the firefighters union, said Saturday night that no police officers were initially available when firefighters called for help.
“We’re unprotected out here,” McNamara said Saturday night.
McNulty said the crowd would have been interfering with the firefighters if they were allowed to walk in and out of the scene.
“Sometimes emotions get the best of people, and I think that’s what happened,” McNulty said.
This what it looks like when civilization collapses. Detroit, Michigan. Firefighters stating that their unprotected from the criminals whose fire they try and out. What happened there post 1967 is the kind of real Black History that should be taught during the month of February.
The game is over for Detroit, Clint Eastwood.
It is up to those American patriots capable of discerning the cold truth from what remains of Old Detroit to start deciding the type of nation they wish to leave their children and grandchildren. To decide what type of world they want to leave for their unborn children.
Detroit of 2012? A world where the greatest growth industry is in private security, like some third world nation?
This scenario will come to any major city that goes the route of Detroit.
Atlanta, Memphis, Birmingham, Baltimore, Cleveland, Chicago, Kansas City, St. Louis, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Nashville, Charlotte, Miami, Cincinnati, Newark, Indianapolis, Philadelphia, Harrisburg... this is your future.
Life After White People.
A land where only madness reigns.
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