In Detroit It's So Bad That The Few Good People Left Are On Their Own

An astonishing article in the Detroit Free Press, at least for those who don't live in Detroit, about how flagrant burglaries and home invasions have become in the city. So frequent that they're not even considered a high priority crime by the Detroit PD.

The Detroit Free Press: John Carlisle: Even in Detroit's best neighborhoods, home invasions steal residents' sense of peace

There were more than 13,000 burglaries in Detroit in 2012, according to FBI statistics — but the true figure is hard to gauge because residents say they often don’t report burglaries anymore, because police are slow to come out, or don’t come out at all.

In a city with so much violent crime, burglaries fall lower on the priority scale. “We don’t try to belittle the crime at all or pass it off, but we do have to prioritize,” said Sgt. Michael Woody, spokesman for the Detroit Police Department.

But burglaries in the city are so frequent that some people’s homes get broken into over and over, usually by the same thieves who come back to either steal their replacement items or get the second-tier things they didn’t get the first time.”

It's so bad that criminals are openly occupying abandoned houses or porches on streets to case the neighborhood to wait for law abiding citizens to leave their houses so they can break in and rob them.

Detroit has adopted the reverse-broken window theory, namely ignoring, under-reporting and indeed tolerating crime until it gets increasingly serious. As anyone could have told them, when you ignore serious crime and declare it a low priority, you get more of it.