Is Detroit getting better? Some key findings Detroit Rising: One year after exiting bankruptcy, are city services in Detroit improving? How is Detroit doing one year after leaving bankruptcy? Any realistic estimation of the city's progress has to take more than finances into account. As Detroit approaches the anniversary of its exit from emergency control and bankruptcy, we look at a range of city services to see whether daily life has actually changed for the majority of Detroit's residents. Streetlights Entity: Public Lighting Authority of Detroit This new entity, using bond money, is a $185-million project to modernize Detroit’s streetlight system. Result: Residents are generally happy, but some have complained the new lights do not cover as much area as the old ones, including leaving sidewalks in the dark. Blight Entity: The Detroit Land Bank Authority Since May 2014: More than 7,000 blighted homes torn down The city now routinely demolishes 100-150 houses a week. Tax collection Entity: City of Detroit Buses Trash pickup Technology
Detroit Fire Department Gets $22.5 Million Federal Homeland Security Grant, 1... Over 100 Detroit firefighters scheduled to be laid off will keep their jobs thanks to a federal grant. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) announced Wednesday that the city would receive $22.5 million in funding from the Department of Homeland Security’s Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) program. “It is vital that we maintain the fire protection our citizens need, even during times of tight budgets,” Levin said in a release. There are 881 sworn firefighters and and 248 EMS technicians on staff in the Detroit Fire Department "There's no other city that's more deserving than Detroit," Dan McNamara, president of the Detroit Fire Fighters Association told the Detroit Free Press. Earlier this week Mayor Bing announced that the Detroit Fire Department would be laying off 164 firefighters -- approximately 18 percent of its force.
Fewest cops are patrolling Detroit streets since 1920s Detroit — There are fewer police officers patrolling the city than at any time since the 1920s, a manpower shortage that sometimes leaves precincts with only one squad car, posing what some say is a danger to cops and residents. Detroit has lost nearly half its patrol officers since 2000; ranks have shrunk by 37 percent in the past three years, as officers retired or bolted for other police departments amid the city's bankruptcy and cuts to pay and benefits. Left behind are 1,590 officers — the lowest since Detroit beefed up its police force to battle Prohibition bootleggers. "This is a crisis, and the dam is going to break," said Mark Diaz, president of the Detroit Police Officers Association. Police Chief James Craig acknowledges he doesn't have as many officers as he'd like. "These officers do the most difficult job in the country, and they need to get paid more," he said. Starting pay for Detroit officers is about $14 per hour, Diaz said. Staffing challenges Deployment shuffle Autoplay
Inside Look at the Detroit Fire Department and its Firefighters Mobile As the Detroit engine pulled in the alley, they found the almost-new Cadillac DeVille fully involved. The license plates were torn off indicating the car might be stolen. While the fire was being extinguished, the officer found the owner’s handicapped tag lying on the ground. He radioed Central to give them the information, and they said they didn’t want it. Welcome to Detroit. I visited there last weekend and talked to some of the firefighters on the front lines. View: Detroit: City on Fire Photo Gallery The administration is about to lay off 160 firefighters, but will hire some back when the funds from a recently-awarded SAFER grant come through. The combat troops have lost faith in the administration’s ability to provide the leadership need to cope with the escalating deterioration of the department. At a public meeting last Tuesday, Fire Commissioner Don Austin said, “I’m doing the very best I can do.” Commissioner Austin continued explaining at the town meeting.
'A Crime': Groups Say Detroit Bankruptcy Plan Benefits Rich, Attacks Working People A group of Detroit residents is condemning the city's newly-approved restructuring plan to exit bankruptcy as a deal that will further benefit the wealthy and corporate class while hurting working people. As Democracy Now! reported Monday: A Detroit judge has approved the city’s effort to restructure finances and shed around $7 billion in debt under its bankruptcy filing last year. In his approval on Friday, U.S. A group called Detroiters Resisting Emergency Management, however, says the pension-cutting Plan of Adjustment is anything but fair. In a statement released Monday, the group writes: "Federal Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes’ approval of the Plan of Adjustment is not in the best interests of Detroiters. Orr, Snyder and Duggan "refuse to acknowledge that the wealth of the surrounding region has been won on the backs of the working people of Detroit. "No other creditors sacrificed like Detroit workers and residents.
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. Most recently, six-year-old Miguel Chavez died, in part due to a delay in the arrival of emergency services, when his family’s Southwest Detroit home caught fire. 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. Aftermath of a residential fire in Detroit A new fight-back is required.
A city in flames: inside Detroit's war on arson For eight long years, the firefighters of Highland Park, Michigan, worked out of a warehouse. There was no red-bricked facade, no lanky Dalmatian. No freshly washed engines gleaming in the sun. No second-floor fire pole to descend in the dead of night to wailing sirens. Whatever idealized vision you have of firefighting, Highland Park is not it. Instead, picture a hulking, boxy building on the edge of an industrial park about six miles north of downtown Detroit. The Highland Park fire department opened nearly a century ago, in 1917, to serve the booming city. "We do stuff kind of old-schoolish, because that’s what we have: old-school, crap equipment," says Scott Ziegler, a first-generation fireman who’s worked in Highland Park for four years. Highland Park is three square miles surrounded by the city of Detroit, and shares the litany of woes affecting the area. "We’ve pulled up to stuff we just couldn’t control." But the population peaked in the 1940s at over 50,000 people.
As Detroit breaks down, scourge of arson burns out of control July 13, 2013|Steve Neavling | Reuters (Reuters) - On the night of July 4, some Detroit residents watched fireworks, and others just watched fires, more than a dozen in a space of two hours. The Independence Day blazes marked the latest flare up of a longtime scourge in Detroit - arson. It is a problem that has festered in the city for decades and has persisted even as the population declined. With the city now teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, the futile struggle to contain arson is an insistent reminder of the depths of Detroit's decline. "It's not safe here. As firefighters attacked flames raging in two adjacent vacant houses, they called for backup equipment that never came. In the next two hours, at least 10 more suspicious fires broke out, leaving skeleton crews to battle the blazes. Detroit has a legacy of troubles with arson. In recent years, arsons connected to Halloween have declined, in part due to the city's reduced population. There is no quick fix in sight.
As Detroit breaks down, scourge of arson burns out of control Data shows Detroit is arson capital Detroit — Nationwide fire data support Detroit's reputation among firehouses as the arson capital of the United States. "It's been that way for years. Every time you'd go to a seminar, you meet up with investigators nationwide and all they want to talk about is Detroit," said Jon Bozich, who retired in 2001 as the chief of the city's Arson Squad. Detroit has averaged 3,800 to 6,000 suspicious building fires annually for years. Nationwide, no city with a population of at least 300,000 has as many suspicious fires or arsons per capita, according to FBI Uniform Crime Reports and the National Fire Incident Reporting System of the U.S. And Detroit is near the top of both lists in total suspicious fires and arsons, despite its smaller population. For ranking purposes, The News defined "suspicious fires" by combining two categories of NFIRS data — fires of undetermined origin and those intentionally set. Both databases have their problems. "The numbers are wacky," he said.
Detroit pays high price for arson onslaught Detroit — Arson is a raging epidemic in Detroit, destroying neighborhoods and lives as the city tries to emerge from bankruptcy. Even amid a historic demolition blitz, buildings burn faster than Detroit can raze them. Last year, the city had 3,839 suspicious fires and demolished 3,500 buildings, according to city records analyzed by The Detroit News. Burned homes scar neighborhoods for years: Two-thirds of those that caught fire from 2010-13 are still standing, records show. "Nothing burns like Detroit," said Lt. The Detroit News researched arson for more than three months and found that it remains a huge obstacle to renewal efforts following bankruptcy. Few neighborhoods were untouched by arson and the entire city bears its costs. "People don't realize arson is a felony. Aides to Mayor Mike Duggan, who has made fighting blight the cornerstone of his administration, declined comment on The News' findings or his strategy for reducing arson. 'Arson is like a cancer' The News found:
Detroit firefighters speak out on bankruptcy By Tim Rivers and Jerry White 29 July 2013 In fire stations across the city of Detroit, discussions are being held about the impact of the city’s bankruptcy filing and initial efforts by rank-and-file firefighters to mobilize opposition to the emergency manager’s attack on pensions and essential services. Last week, scores of red T-shirted firefighters, organized in the ad hoc Public Safety Workers Action Group (PSWAG), fanned out across the city holding informational pickets and protests outside of fire stations and the Federal Bankruptcy Court. They have explained the connection between decades of layoffs, fire station closings and other budget reductions, and the increased dangers facing residents in the sprawling city of 139 square miles. “Why stay on the job and risk your life with no guarantee of a future?” Robert pointing to death notices at Engine 55 Ladder 27 “One firefighter, Dwayne Garland, passed away after being exposed to some chemicals. “It’s all about money.
Bottom line after Detroit bankruptcy: 200 more police officers, 100 new firefighters Chief U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen, lead Detroit bankruptcy mediator on adjustment plan Chief U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen, the lead bankruptcy mediator, thanks a large group of people who worked on Detroit's bankruptcy deal and sacrificed for the greater good during a press conference after U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhode's confirmation of Detroit's plan of adjustment at Theodore Levin United States Courthouse in Detroit, Nov. 7, 2014 (Tanya Moutzalias | MLive Detroit) DETROIT, MI -- The city can now afford to hire more police and firefighters. That's the bottom line after a 16-month court process that came to a triumphant climax Friday with Detroit being authorized to shed $7 billion of debt. "There are going to be more than 200 additional police officers on the street as a result of the plan," said Mayor Mike Duggan. Implementation of an elaborate, 10-year plan to restore long-broken city services is now possible after U.S. Others complied for fear of deeper cuts.