Having spent considerable time in the bowels of Detroit as a young man, I know firsthand about the violence that can jump off there in a moment's notice, especially when one is engaged in activities prone to attracting violent types.
I recall one particularly nasty incident where my friend and I had just finished work on an early Friday afternoon and, flush with a paycheck, headed over to some dope houses just off some gnarly drug-infested neighborhood about a block in from a particularly mean area of Michigan Avenue.
We didn't know it at the time, but earlier in the day, police had raided the house we frequented, and after all the dealers were carted off to jail, a local gang had set up shop on the porch to rob customers who were coming by to cop.
We rolled up in an Bobcat Hatchback, ready to buy a "bundle" of what is known on Detroit streets as "Mixed Jive." It's been a long time since I've even thought about this, let alone purchased any of the shit, and I do mean "shit," since it was a mixture of low-grade heroin and God knows what else cooked up in the basements of dope fiend's homes in and around the Detroit area. I remember too that we once asked an African American dealer - after we'd copped and done a couple of bindles, of course - what this stuff was, and he said, "it's our way of thinning the white man's population!" This was followed by a hearty laugh, and I never did figure out whether he was serious or not, but if he was, all I can say is that, after all the shit we've dumped into their communities and all the "thinning" of their population we've accomplished over the decades, we get what is coming to us.
Anyway, mixed jive was sold in these little paper envelopes, and I recall we used to look for "the madness" brand, which was a blue envelope with the XOX across the front of it. The way this stuff os slung on the streets of Detroit - or at least the way it used to be dealt - was that you'd roll up in your car with your window down and your money clasped firmly in your hand so the dealers could see it.
They'd mob the car from all sides, trying to get you to buy from them. And I do mean "mob;" it wasn't unusual to have 10-15 people run up on your car to try and sell you the dope in many of these neighborhoods. You knew business was happening if there were people playing basketball nearby. Sounds crazy, but one of the ways they kept an eye out for cops was to use spotters who shot hoop all day. If a beat cop, or the dreaded "Big 4," (a mean-assed group of nasty narc cops that roamed the city streets back in the 70s and 80s) headed into your neighborhood, the boys playing basketball would stop and hold the ball. That little signal was transmitted up and down streets like wildfire and within moments, a once teaming dope market would turn into desolate streets without so much as a person anywhere to be seen.
So anyway, we pulled up in front of this dope house, the folks on the porch all ran out and circled our car, and we were looking for a "bundle," which is usually 12 packets for the price of 10, or $100.
My friend Richard was driving and holding the money, shouting out the window that he needed a bundle as a dozen hands pushed their way in to show him their product.
I watched from the passenger side, keeping an eye on what was going on and....well, I'd never thought out much further what would happen if something did jump off, but hell, I was 17, invincible and was living on the streets of Detroit; I was one badass motherfucker, at least in my own mind.
Suddenly, I saw the barrel of a gun enter the car, right behind Richard's ear. I shouted, "GUN! GO!" and Richard, in a matter of seconds that seemed like hours, slipped a foot off the clutch and floored that little Bobcat, lurching us forward. The dude fired off several rounds, the first one channeling along Richard's ribs and passing clean through to lodge in the dashboard right in front of me. The second one went through his right thigh and into the seat. The third, fourth and fifth ones blew out the back window and took out the radio and temperature controls. Richard was yelling "I've been hit, I've been hit!" as we flew down side streets, running for our lives.
We got Richard to a small neighborhood hospital and he was rushed into the ER. Turns out that he had been beyond lucky; both bullets that had hit him had managed to miss vital organs and ended up being ugly flesh wounds. To add insult to injury, the "security" guard forced me to park our car off hospital property because the back window was blown out, but promised me he'd "keep an eye on it," so nothing else would happen to it.
Yeah, right.
When I returned to the vehicle several hours later, it'd been picked damn near clean by street thieves. No tires/wheels, no radiator or carburetor, no battery, and they'd begun removing the seats as well.
I can recall a dozen other nasty memories of Detroit that today shocks my own conscience and makes me wonder once again how I ever survived long enough to get enough smarts to know this was a world of desperation, created by those who have nothing to lose and even less to live for.
Most of my own memories of time spent in the Motor City are back in the 70s; from the info in the article it doesn't look like much has changed, with the exception that now, guns are even more prevalent, cocaine in crack form, meth and angel dust (pcp) are probably cooked on just about every street, and the desperation of life in a dying city must be extreme, indeed.
Last Updated: September 02. 2011 1:00AM
City's northeast corner had more summer shootings than any other area
George Hunter and Mike Wilkinson/ The Detroit News
Detroit — At first glance, the streets along Detroit's northeast corner don't appear to be the city's most dangerous.
On
a recent sunny afternoon, teenagers played basketball on a new court
while younger children chased an ice-cream truck. An elderly woman sat
on the porch of her well-kept brick bungalow and watched two boys toss a
football.
But across the street, the dead were honored with
memorials on utility poles. Some featured stuffed animals, others
consisted of dozens of liquor bottles. Farther down Novara Street, one
of several burned-out homes bore a message in spray-paint: "R.I.P Vees."
"It's not too bad around here during the day," resident Richard Evans
said. "At night, though, it gets pretty crazy. … If you see trouble
starting, get in the house quick."
The nights have been deadly:
At least 38 people were shot and eight died from the first day of
summer, June 21, to Aug. 21, in the 48205 ZIP code, a 6.5-square-mile
slice of the city north of Coleman A. Young International Airport
roughly bordered by Eight Mile, Hoover, Conner and Kelly.
That's
more shootings and deaths than any other ZIP code in the city, according
to a Detroit News analysis of crime data provided by police. The
neighborhood of 44,000 residents accounts for 6 percent of the city's
population, but was home to 15 percent of its murders and 13 percent of
its shooting victims.
Citywide, there were at least 254 shootings
involving 303 victims — and at least 52 died — during the two months
studied by The News. The tallies could be even higher, since 24-hour
Major Crime Summary Reports the Detroit Police send daily to the media
aren't comprehensive.
Other parts of the city with high rates of
shootings include the Brightmoor neighborhood and the southeast side,
each of which had well more than the citywide average of 3.5 shootings
per 10,000 residents over the period.
Downtown and Midtown also
had higher-than-average rates, but that is largely due to a statistical
quirk because of their low resident populations. If daytime workers were
considered, the two would be among the safest in the city.
Despite
the outcry over this summer's 52 shooting deaths, the level of violence
isn't unprecedented: Statistics aren't available for the summer of
2010, but 76 people were murdered over the same two months in 2009.
And for every shooting that makes headlines, dozens more get no media attention.
In some neighborhoods, like the northeast side, gunfire is nearly as common as sunsets.
"You
hear shots all the time around here at night," said resident Charles
Williams, 40, who lives in the 48205 ZIP code. "I just try to mind my
own business; I keep my head down and don't mess with anyone. If I had
the money, I'd move."
Police are outgunned
Detroit Police Chief Ralph Godbee said his officers are "frustrated" by the constant gunfire.
"They
are frustrated with how some homicides are so senseless," he said.
"It's reckless; it's wanton. It baffles the imagination, and that's
where the frustration is."
Police are outgunned, Godbee said.
"Officers
now have a challenge with the high-powered weapons on the street, like
the AK-47 and TEC-9, in the hands of individuals with very little to no
respect for the community or law enforcement," he said. "Our officers
are working at a tremendous risk."
In an attempt to quell the
violence, Godbee this month rolled out "Operation Inside Out: Night
Angels," a program that re-deploys desk officers to patrol one
eight-hour shift per week. The program has put an extra 40 to 50
officers on patrol each shift.
David Malhalab, who retired from
the Detroit Police Department in 2005 after 21 years of patrolling some
of the city's most dangerous neighborhoods, said putting more officers
on the street will have little effect if the department takes away from
other vital resources.
"You need police officers in the
precincts; you need detectives," Malhalab said. "What good is having 50
extra cops on the street and only two detectives? The reports generated
by the patrol officers go to the detectives, and if there aren't enough
detectives, those reports will pile up on somebody's desk and the crimes
will never get solved."
In many neighborhoods, including several
streets in the 48205 ZIP code, streetlights don't work. When Detroit
Police Officer Brian Huff was killed last year in the area at an
abandoned duplex on Schoenherr near Eight Mile, officers at the scene
said they couldn't see much because the streetlights were out.
"You've
got to have good community relations, but you can't have that with a
dysfunctional city," Malhalab said. "If the residents have a streetlight
out in their area, they need to see someone come turn that on. If not,
they lose faith in the city — which means they lose faith in the
police."
Godbee said a disproportionate number of shootings involve convicted felons who have been released from prison.
In
42 of the shootings studied by The News, the victims claimed they
didn't know why they were shot, or who pulled the trigger. Many told
police they were walking down the street, heard shots and felt pain. One
victim bolted from an ambulance after he was transported to a hospital,
police said.
"In a lot of those cases, (the victims) know who
shot them, but they don't want to tell the police — they want to take
care of it themselves, and then you get yet another shooting," Malhalab
said. "A whole lot of the shootings are from people selling drugs, which
leads to confrontations and disputes, which leads to someone pulling
out a gun."
Residents in northeast Detroit said they weren't
surprised their ZIP code was the city's most violent this summer. But
they said the neighborhood isn't all bad.
Some blocks, like those
on Novara, are dotted with abandoned homes. But there are blocks like
Evans' on Fairmont with well-kept, sturdy homes and manicured lawns.
"There are still people around here who care," said Evans, 35, who lives with his wife, Doris, and their 2-year-old son.
But the number of people who remain in the city and try to improve their neighborhoods may be dwindling.
'Kids killing kids'
Detroit's
population plunged 25 percent since 2000 to 713,777. Abandonment was
more profound in the 48205 ZIP code, where population declined 34
percent from 67,000 to 44,045.
Gangs have caused big problems at
Osborn High School on Seven Mile and Hoover, according to an April
report from Mayor Dave Bing's office.
"Gangs, especially
transient gangs that are less organized — and often, randomly violent —
terrorize some of our neighborhoods including … Osborn," said the
report, which relied on Detroit police data.
At least four current and former students were killed this summer.
On
Thursday, friends and relatives gathered for visitation services of the
latest shooting victim, Allantae Powell, a promising football player
who was killed in an Aug. 24 drive-by shooting.
Standing outside Butler Funeral Home, relatives struggled to make sense of the bloodshed.
"I
know five kids that got killed in the past few years," said Evelyn
Walker, Powell's grandmother, who lives on Carlysle near Eight Mile.
"And you hear about a lot more in the neighborhood, too, every day it
seems like."
Powell's aunt, Sankia Powell, said she sees photos on Facebook of children she knows posing with guns.
"I
went on vacation last week, and when I got back everyone's telling me
who got killed; I was only gone a few days and four people were killed,"
Powell said.
"It's other kids doing most of it," Walker answered, shaking her head. "Kids killing kids."
ghunter@detnews.com
(313) 222-2134
Staff Writer Robert Snell contributed.
On August 10, 2011, the Federal Housing Financing Administration, Treasury, and Department of Housing and Urban Development issued a joint Request For Information (RFI) "seeking input on new options for selling [250,000] single-family real estate owned (REO) properties held by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the Federal Housing Administration."
The
President will announce his proposals to boost job creation next week,
but the political climate for meaningful action remains daunting. The
situation cries out for additional policies to give the
sluggish economic recovery a boost. Those would include extending for
another year the additional weeks of unemployment insurance and
the payroll tax cut scheduled to expire at the end of this year;
additional infrastructure investment, such as the Fix America's Schools
Today program (FAST!), that increases the country's long-term
productive capacity while boosting economic growth and job creation in
the short term; and federal assistance to states, which continue
to enact job-killing budget measures to satisfy their balanced budget
requirements.
Doubling
up in this case is defined as an individual or family living in a
housing unit with extended family, friends, and other non-relatives due
to economic hardship. A household is severely housing cost burdened if
it pays 50 percent or more of its monthly income on housing costs. Both
conditions are either a sign or consequence of housing instability, and
can be a precursor to homelessness.
Furthermore,
7 in 10 working poor individuals experience low earnings.5 The top five
occupations which employ working poor persons can be broadly
categorized within the BLS employment classifications of retail trade
and leisure/hospitality. According to 2008 BLS data, workers in the
leisure and hospitality sector were paid an average of $12.78/hour, and
those in the retail trade sector were paid $15.23/hour. This compares
with average private sector earnings of $21.62/hour.
