I’ve spent a good chunk of my working life doing late night retail shifts in high crime areas and police visits were only roughly as welcomed as robbery attempts.
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But just electing more Democrats will fix everything, right? Same as in St Louis?
I don’t live in Detroit, so grain of salt. (Then again, a dear friend of mine was gunned down walking to a class at Wayne State, so I’m not without a feeling of having a stake in Detroit’s crime problems.)
Heavy handed…maybe. But this program, and the Cease Fire Detroit initiative, seem to be working. Carjackings are down by half (IIRC) over the past year, and murders are down by 160+ over the past two years. Detroit’s violent crime rate is now lower than any time since the '60s.
It’s not a pay-for-play situation. The expense is for HDTV cams indoors and out; access and storage; signage. The city doesn’t get a check. I’ve been thinking of this as a business regulation, like a requirement to install fire sprinklers or handicap access or cast iron drain lines. For years, businesses in downtown have been screaming about violent crime (srsly, the carjackings were out of control). This seems to be helping. (Another benefit of realtime observation is the reduction of diversionary fake 911 calls, aimed at luring cops away from the actual sites of violence/crime.)
Detroit’s got myriad holes to climb out of – bankruptcy, understaffing, lack of regional transit, thousands of abandoned/foreclosed houses, shitty tax base. If you’ve got a magic wand, please share!
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There was a rundown of crime stats on the local news last night, and the dropping rates of violent crime was such a nice bit of good news for the city the whole planet lives to hate.
The police have made 700 or so hires in the last few years, and have shifted away from Broken Windows when they’re not too busy simply reacting to calls. DPD has an additional advantage with the residents in that they’re simply not as murder-y as police in other large cities. The leadership is perpetually corrupt, but street cops aren’t completely untrustworthy. That makes a big difference in their effectiveness.
I don’t live in the city, either, but everyone in SE MI should feel they have a stake in Detroit turning around. Over the last 20 or so years, the city has only gotten better. Over the next 20 years, Detroit really could become great again.
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I really am hopeful too, i have no immediate investment in the area because i live in Texas but Detroit has been in a slump for ages now and any progress there can be taken as progress for the rest of the country. I do wonder as the city becomes safer is gentrification will push out long tim residents like i’ve seen in other places i’ve lived at :\
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Gentrification is already pushing lower to moderate income people from the heart of downtown. It’s a terrible side effect of any city becoming the ‘hip’ place to live.
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Crime, like any other business, is based on the least amount of expenditures to generate the most amount of income. If I having “Green Light” cameras and more patrols means the criminals move on to another business, how would that be bad for me?
If these things are paid for through taxation, rather than my own business outlays, and it means I can keep my prices a little lower, stay in business and employ a few people, how would that be bad for the neighborhood?
I’ve never understood why people are against gentrification. If the property values go up, then the taxes paid by those properties go up, then the cities have more cash to help everyone in the city.
Of course, if the city council are a bunch of corrupt kleptocrats, then the taxes just line their own pockets, but that isn’t the fault of the people who are renovating the brownstones.
The facts are indisputable: Rent controls help rich people pay less rent and reduce the amount of lower-rent properties that are available.
Curbed.com often has very valuable information, but they often interpret it backwards.
Nowhere in this article, or anywhere else, does anyone ask what is really happening with the taxes that are being collected on these apartments for which the rent has doubled in the past year. The cities should be swimming in cash - what are they doing with it?
Michigan has limits on how quickly property taxes go up. Doubling rent doubles income for the landlord, and taxes can only go up a percent-ish (I forget what the limit is). Also, land value can be completely divorced from the maximum rent that can be extracted for any given apartment. As for gentrification, it’s a mixed bag because long-time residents generally get pushed out, especially residents who were renting.
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