Posted on 02/09/2012 9:27:00 AM PST by marktwain
The people of Detroit are taking no prisoners.
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?’ ”
Mara.Gay@thedaily.com
Yep.
But wasn’t it recently insinuated (Superbowl) that it is Halftime (in Detroit) and that it is up to us to get the job of recovery done???
I mean it WAS Mr. Clint Eastwood who said it at the behest of the U.S. Government, Administration, Chamber of Commerce and the City of Detroit where they said it was filmed...
But it was not really filmed in Detroit, too dangerous...they used New Orleans and L.A. for the dark seedy looking streets in the PSA...
Now these ordinary citizens taking the law into their own hands, now thats just plain over the top...We can’t have them doing the job the police up there can’t do by themselves...Geesh what are these people thinking!!!
Ohhhh wait, I forgot to add...
/sarc
There, I feel better now...Whew, that was a close one!!!
I think Joe Horn could give her some pointers...
By her stating that she pans on taking one out is not a premeditated act...She is making a declarative statement that she is intending to defend herself when the time comes that someone else makes an incorrect assumption and commits a criminal act against her, that she will defend herself within the confines of the law...
Making a statement like that is not a crime, nor will it be (they will try to make it germaine to any homicide she is involve with), but it will not stand, that will be successfully objected to if attempted to be entered into the court record...
She also seems like a woman who will not just shoot through the door either...If she went out and petitioned for a permit, then she sounds like someone who is jumping through the hoops to cover all her bases...Good for her...
Boy, I clicked on that link, and I have to say they need to do a speel cheek on that webpage...How embarrasing...
And they have a maritime division, including paddles!!! hehehe
I’m sorry, but those folks look like a bunch of “tacticool” wannabes...Looking to feel the “jazz” again...If they ever had it before...
If I need help getting people off my property, as they advertise they can...Then I am not living in the right place, or I am a weenie...
Doesn’t take much imagination when you have facts to back you up.
Which city was first in per capita murders? I’d wager it’s Memphis. And it’s coming soon to all of our towns, not just cities.
A week or so after Katrina I saw a bunch of New York cop cars in a convoy in Virginia headed north. I asked one of them on the C.B what was going on and he said they’d been to New Orleans. He said it was a war zone.
A few days later I saw the same thing in New Mexico. Cops headed home from New Orleans. I didn’t see any of this on the news coverage.
I recall the Joke - when they used to ask when you de-planed if you had a fire arm and if you said no they handed you one. This is not only in Detroit - heck in Yuma we have places where the law does not go unless they absolutly have to. I recall neighbor hood watch while I was in Lancaster and we had dope houses in the hood. We finally drove them out - it took a few folks with shootguns since the police did nothing. If they know they will not get caught and you are harmless then they take over. Good for those that fight back.
What makes you think that the courts in Detroit are so much better than the police in Detroit? What makes you think that a Detroit public defender would have the wit to object?
That's because the state of Michigan uses taxpayer money to provide a refundable tax credit amounting to 40% of film production expenses in the state. Spend $100,000, get a check for $40,000 minus MBT.
True...There are no guarantees in any court of law these days...You get a roll of the dice with those public defenders, you are right about that...
But if you get your own attorney, then the odds may be a little more in your favor, especially if it is one that understands the issue...
I think it is prudent to pre-pay for legal defense if you carry a firearm permitted (if required in that state) or if it isn’t required to carry on a permit...
Most of those firms give you a card to hand to the police (investigators) explaining that this client is not required to say anything (other than establish ID) to them till they arrive for any questioning...
I think in this day and age it is a good thing to have legal representation for any gun related incidents, regardless of your location...
I pay about $130 a year for it...And it is all the way through the process...
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