Cuts in fire protection leading to deaths in Detroit
By Lawrence Porter 12 February 2013 Detroit firefighters battle a house fire A series of brutal budget cuts to the Detroit Fire Department and other social services by Mayor David Bing, the Detroit City Council and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder is producing the foreseeable outcome: the death of Detroit residents. One tragedy follows another. A week earlier, firefighters from southwest Detroit were called to fight a fire in the northwest, a distance of 18 miles, because of fire station closures. Not long before that, a 71-year-old man died in a house fire only four minutes away from a fire station recently closed. “They are killing people,” said one firefighter, after he and a coworker pulled an elderly couple out of their home in a fire in November. Definite individuals are responsible for a policy that has produced these and many other tragedies. The “right-sizing” of Detroit goes under the Orwellian banner of the “Detroit Works Project.” Aftermath of a residential fire in Detroit
Anatomy of Detroit’s Decline - Interactive Feature
Mayor Coleman A. Young of Detroit at an event in 1980. Richard Sheinwald/Associated Press The financial crisis facing Detroit was decades in the making, caused in part by a trail of missteps, suspected corruption and inaction. Here is a sampling of some city leaders who trimmed too little, too late and, rather than tackling problems head on, hoped that deep-rooted structural problems would turn out to be cyclical downturns. Charles E. Edward Jeffries, who served as mayor from 1940 to 1948, developed the Detroit Plan, which involved razing 100 blighted acres and preparing the land for redevelopment. Albert Cobo was considered a candidate of the wealthy and of the white during his tenure from 1950 to 1957. Coleman A. Kwame M. Dave Bing, a former professional basketball star, took office in 2009 pledging to solve Detroit’s fiscal problems, which by then were already overwhelming. Related
We saved the automakers. How come that didn’t save Detroit?
It's common for headline-writers to refer to the Big Three automakers — Ford, Chrysler, and GM — as "Detroit." The monument to Joe Louis in Detroit, known as "The Fist." (Paul Sancya/AP) But that metonymy is misleading in a very important way. The fortunes of Detroit the city are no longer tied up with the fortunes of the Big Three automakers. That helps explain why Ford, Chrysler, and GM have all been thriving since the auto bailout in 2009 while the city of Detroit continued to deteriorate and has now just declared bankruptcy. From 1910 to 1950, Detroit's economy was synonymous with car manufacturing. Even then, much of the auto industry's industrial base wasn't in the city proper. But starting in 1950, automakers began moving more and more of their operations further away. Detroit's auto jobs kept vanishing as the Big Three lost market share to foreign automakers starting in the 1970s. Today, there are only two auto factories left in Detroit. But that's it. Wonkbook newsletter
The Bills That Want to Solve Detroit's School Crisis
Three months into her son’s first pass at third grade, Arlyssa Heard had a breakdown. Judah was bright, but had begun calling himself stupid. The chaos of Detroit’s precarious education landscape had forced him to switch schools every few months, leaving him further and further behind. There was no central system to transfer Judah’s records when he moved, and according to Heard the school where he started the 2014-15 academic year had a single teacher assigned to 44 third-graders. Heard says she was one of the parents Detroit Public Schools turned to when it needed a strong family showing at a rally or community members to serve on a task force. “Here I was this advocate for education, and I couldn’t find a place for my son,” she says. The scope of the problems plaguing Detroit schools—both traditional district schools and charters—is almost unfathomable. Heard was part of the group that drafted the recommendations on which the Senate bill is based.
Inkster Police Chief Resigns Citing Senseless Crime, Lack Of Resources
DETROIT (WWJ) – Inkster’s police chief has resigned. Hilton Napoleon turned in his resignation Thursday, citing what he calls the “senseless murder of a two-year old” as one reason. Napoleon also says he’s been working under extreme working conditions during the past 18 months, including the lack of resources. His resignation is effective Friday. The two-year-old he is referring to is Kamiya Gross. She was shot to death July 1 outside a home on Carlyle Street. Napoleon, has been on the job for about three years, and has advocated for Wayne County Sheriff’s department to step in and handle Inkster’s policing–to save money and to help crack down on violent crime. The city is under a consent decree with the state – as it has seen its police force dwindle from about 60 to 25. In a Free Press article last fall, Hilton Napoleon, the brother of Wayne County Sheriff Benny Napoleon, said he believe some of Inkster officers lacked integrity and weren’t “qualified to be police officers.”
Detroit loses 1,400 police officers in a decade, struggles to keep pace with crime
RELATED: Find details on police and crime trends in your area. DETROIT, MI - Police officers in Detroit, a city that's struggled for years to maintain services, are working as hard as ever. There just aren't enough of them. The state's largest department thinned from 3,700 sworn officers to 2003 to just over 2,700 in 2012. Today's count is 2,419. By contrast the state's second largest department, the Michigan State Police, lost 17 percent of officers in the past decade, according to an MLive Media Group investigation into a decade of police manpower and crime statistics. "We only have just under 1,900 actual police officers, who are the ones who will respond to your house and your crisis situation," said Mark Diaz, the police union president. Detroit currently has 16 sworn officers per square mile; Los Angeles had 25, based on 2011 FBI data. The city's financial struggles, and now bankruptcy filing, has accelerated a departure from the department. Other moves include: Falling crime?
