Why Detroit Can't Have Nice Things, Part The Umpteenth

Detroit's fireworks displays were again disrupted this year by innocent people being shot when in the crossfire of hood-rats having arguments.

The Detroit News: Victim recalls pain, fear after being shot at fireworks

Also in Detroit, a very eco-friendly and people-friendly Bicycle shop and its employees get death threats after a black customer first verbally abuses a Black employee for "working for the master now" (yep you can't make that up), and then the goofball makes up a claim that the store personnel jumped him because he was black, leading the usual scumbags and those with perpetual grievances to threaten the lives of the store workers and the store:

The Detroit News: Detroit bike shop closes after alleged racial incident

The headline on the article for the incident is rather misleading, do read the whole article to get an accurate picture. Note the shop being threatened is part of a group in a program giving bikes to impoverished Detroit youth and teachign them bike repair. Apparently no good deed goes unpunished in Detroit.

That's Detroit for you.

Your Belief That Things In Detroit Are Upside Down Is Confirmed When...

It's the cops that are wearing masks: as seen in the picture accompanying the linked article.

And it's the robbers that are brazenly showing their faces: Unmasked suspect stands in line to rob bank in Grosse Pointe Woods

Yeah, it's like that in the D.

Detroit Has Gone To The Dogs (And Cats)

The Detroit News: 7,500 stray dogs, 18,000 cats roam Detroit streets, MSU researcher says

Understand that the study is based on a survey the researcher sent to animal shelters in Detroit.

Other studies suggest there may be as many as 50,000 stray dogs roaming Detroit.

No one really knows the actual amount.

Meanwhile In Detroit - Got Change For The Bus?

How Bad is it in Detroit?

It's so bad, it costs them $1 million to count $14 million in fares a year - and they count the fares by hand, in a room with money cast about willy-nilly.

The Detroit News: Detroit to hire help to get disorganized bus fare counting on track

The city is hiring an armored car company to handle the daily collection of bus-fare revenue after officials discovered a disorganized cash-counting operation within the Department of Transportation, The Detroit News has learned.

. . .

The plan is to scrap the current cash system that involves employees counting bus-fare revenue each day at the DDOT central office on Warren Avenue.

“There literally is a room where employees sit around a table and just count money. It wasn’t well organized,” said Gary Brown, the city’s chief restructuring officer. “There was money on the floor, and in bags, and the money’s been there a couple weeks.”

Read that last paragraph again. A city with a longstanding history of corruption and incompetence that's been on the verge of bankruptcy and now finally is in bankruptcy has, as a matter of ongoing practice, having cash money just lying around for weeks in a disorganized mess.

Anyone want to take a bet that some of that money has been sticking to various fingers and going elsewhere then back into the transportation department's coffers?

Tell me again how its such a great idea to get into a regional transportation agreement with an agency like that?

So, How Bad Is It In Detroit? So Bad That Serious Crime Covers All

When you try to answer the question "So, How Bad Is It In Detroit?" Your answer may just be underestimating how bad it really is there.

Looking at the interactive map provided by the Detroit News of the reported murders and shootings that have taken place in Detroit since May 2012 is rather sobering. The dots indicating a murder or shooting cover, well, just about the entire city.

Even zooming in makes the city look like it has a case of multicolored measles, with no vaccine in sight.

But some bright news is set for the future.

After decades of neglect under one -party rule and being quite unable to account where millions of dollars for repairs have disappeared rather being actually used for restoring the street lights - they may just get the city's streetlights back up and running by 2016!

Surviving On The Scraps Of The Past

An interesting article in the Detroit Free Press about individuals in Detroit's Delray district legally prospecting in an old scrapyard for scrap metal to sell.

The Detroit Free Press: John Carlisle: Delray's diggers find scrap metal, pride and fellowship

It was morning in Delray in southwest Detroit, on a littered abandoned corner lot not far from the river. A half-dozen young men stood in holes they’d dug in the ground, chopping at the soil, yanking out anything remotely metallic that a scrapyard might give them a few dollars for — from thick steel beams and small copper fittings down to jagged shards of slag.
This was a scrapyard half a century ago, and over the years, tons of steel and copper and aluminum wound up buried in the lot. Since it closed, the neighborhood’s residents have been mining here, with the blessing of the lot’s current owner, since he’d have to pay to remove all that debris anyway if anything is ever done with the property.

Some of the workers there are making some decent money prospecting, and they're certainly doing both hard and legal work. 

It's a sad commentary on Detroit's current state that these hard workers' most economically viable course of action in the city is to dig in the dirt to find and sell the detritus that was manufactured and buried here long ago.

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.

So, Now How Bad is It In Detroit?

It's so bad, even the Detroit Police Chief just narrowly avoided being carjacked. That's how bad it is.

The Detroit News: Detroit police chief talks safety strategies with city residents

Detroit Police Chief James Craig spoke with residents Saturday about efforts to make neighborhoods safer and revealed he'd nearly been a victim of crime in the city as well.

"I was almost a victim two weeks ago of carjacking," said Craig to a stunned crowd. "The Chief of Police, I know. Can you believe that? I'm happy I had the presence of mind."

Sadly, the article doesn't give any details, or what his having "the presence of mind" had to do with anything, but it's a rather telling event when even the Police Chief is susceptible to getting jacked in the D.

So, How Bad is it in Detroit? It's So Bad, Even The Employed Detroit City Workers Are Making Unemployment Claims.

They're fraudulent unemployment claims of course, but that's never stopped them before.

The Detroit Free Press: Report finds Detroit employees profited in unemployment benefit claim fraud

An Auditor General’s report on the City of Detroit’s employee benefits has found significant likelihood of fraud in the administration of unemployment benefits, including what appears to be some active city workers in human resources creating fraudulent unemployment benefit claims for themselves.

At least half of the unemployment claims made are deemed either fraudulent or highly suspicious. Does anyone still think we don't need to investigate fraud (including voter fraud) in Democrat-run cities....

So, How Bad Is It In Detroit?

It's so bad, they're seriously considering replacing the lawn maintenance crews with goats and sheep, that's how bad it is.

The Detroit Free Press: Detroit to look at goats, sheep for trimming grass

That's because nothing says you've got a thriving (yet bankrupt) Democrat-run city like having goats and sheep wandering about eating the bountiful weeds sprouting up amongst the abandoned lots and overgrown parks.

So, How Bad Is It In Detroit? So Bad They're Even Stealing Bodies And The Money is Now In Demolishing, Not Building Homes

Two stories that illustrate how messed up Detroit has become:

The Detroit Free Press: Confessed body snatcher ordered to stay on medication, serve probation

A Detroit man accused of stealing his father’s corpse from an east side cemetery earlier this year was sentenced this morning and ordered to take medicine for mental health problems.

And:

The Detroit Free Press: About 4,000 blighted Detroit buildings being demolished with $52M in federal cash

The officials gathered on Turner Street off Puritan near Livernois to trumpet $52 million in federal funds the Obama administration is making available to Detroit to help stabilize neighborhoods. It’s estimated that the city has as many as 78,000 vacant and abandoned buildings, and neighbors say the homes become magnets for crime — from drug dealing to thievery of materials inside — pushing down property values and making neighborhoods unsafe.

Note that this grant of $52 million in taxpayer money only demolishes 4,000 homes. In other words, it costs $13,000 to demolish a house in Detroit at prevailing union wages. One would think they could do it for less, given the urgency of the crisis, but people must be paid off after all.

With 78,000 abandoned buildings, it will take at least $962,000,000 to demolish the remainder -- essentially a billion dollars -- that the bankrupt city doesn't have, nor do the Feds really have it to give it. Even if they did, it will not be enough to revive this shattered, Democrat-dominated corrupt mockery of a city.