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Detroit, again

by Will

Outsiders moaning about Detroit’s woes can be a little unseemly (see this photo gallery, for example), but it’s hard not to feel for the residents of this embattled neighborhood. Read the whole thing, as they say.

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13 comments

1 Scott { 03.09.10 at 9:28 am }

Sorry, I don’t feel bad for them. They let the criminals terrorize them. Kill one of two the the criminals and the message will get around that the ‘hood is not safe for them.

Mark Thompson Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 10:18 am

From the article:
“Tigh Croff’s home on Manistique was broken into three times in one week just before the holidays. Then he came home three days after Christmas and found two men in his backyard in what looked to be the fourth burglary. That’s when he lost it.

Police say a furious Croff chased one of the unarmed men out of the yard and down the street about a block before the suspect got winded and stopped running. Croff is accused of then shooting him in the chest, killing him right there on the street. He’s now charged with second-degree murder.

It happened just outside Jackson’s neighborhood, but it was close enough, and familiar enough, for him to understand Croff’s anger. “We want to support that guy as much as we can,” Jackson says. “Everybody in Detroit should support him. You go out in the neighborhood, talk to the neighbors, they say he takes care of the neighborhood.”

The same is said about Alvin Davis. During Memorial Day weekend last year, after someone broke into his elderly mother’s house on Marlborough, a couple streets over from Jackson, Davis, a federal agent with the Department of Homeland Security, spent the weekend allegedly combing the neighborhood, interrogating several residents, even forcing one into his car at gunpoint. He’s currently awaiting trial on several charges.”

Crime dropped for awhile after the killing – but only for awhile. Meanwhile, these two guys get to go to jail. The trouble with vigilantism like this is that it only works if the vigilante is just as much a criminal as the criminals. Otherwise, the act of vigilantism becomes easily solved and the vigilante goes up the river.

Scott Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 10:27 am

Which is why you have to be a bit smarter and never do anything in anger. And it doesn’t hurt to carry a drop gun.

Mark Thompson Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 11:35 am

You suggested that “kill one or two of the criminals and the message will get around that the hood is not safe for them.” The article itself proves this to be incorrect.

To be sure, some folks would be better off if they had the ability and the means to become sufficiently well-armed to adequately protect themselves. But even that can only do so much.

Scott Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 11:53 am

Mark:

Sorry, the article doesn’t “prove” that killing a couple of the criminals doesn’t work. Instead, maybe it “proves” that killing one or two isn’t enough to send a message. I’m not sure that we can rely on the article to “prove” anything.

Jaybird Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 11:55 am

Sadly, the democrats have turned our country from a place where normal people were able to kill people into one where normal people aren’t keen to kill people.

Yet another way that Franklin Delano Roosevelt has destroyed our country.

Scott Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 12:42 pm

Don’t forget to thank Detroit’s great ex-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and gun control.

Jaybird Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 12:50 pm

Snort.

It’s obviously a place where there is not a police presence. At this point blaming “gun control” must be deliberate self-parody.

Scott Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 1:23 pm

Snort all you want. It wasn’t that long ago the Mich passed the Michigan’s Self Defense Act which protects those who use deadly force to protect themselves. After the act passed applications for carry permits went so people could finally protect themselves.

2 Mark Thompson { 03.09.10 at 10:03 am }

This part got me the most:
“The same thing happened to B.J. Lewis, a 30-year resident of Ashland Street. She once had two German shepherds for protection. “Several years ago I went to open up my kitchen door and there’s a guy in my yard, and you know what he told me? ‘What are you gonna do, bitch?’ remembers the 71-year-old. “I just opened the door and let the dogs out and I called 911.” The dogs chased him off. “What would have happened to me if I didn’t have the dogs?”

She didn’t have them much longer. Someone came and killed them. The usual method around here is lacing hot dogs or chicken with antifreeze. The dogs like its sweet taste. They die pretty quickly after eating it.

“We seem to be under siege,” Lewis says. She’s got one dog left, a pet she won’t let out in the yard alone anymore. “My dog is about the only dog that’s living at this end of the street. There used to be dogs on both sides, all the way down. These criminals are terrorists.”

For some reason, dogs always make a story more personal for me.

That is a great piece of journalism there, by the way.

Will Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 10:10 am

By a blogger, no less!

3 North { 03.09.10 at 10:20 am }

What a nightmare!

4 Trackbacks { 07.30.10 at 7:13 pm }