The council has held hearings in response to the many citizen complaints about a police response time that rivaled the speed of a sloth in heat.
A True Story
I watched a Detroit city council meeting on Comcast in disbelief one night, as a citizen testified he received a call from his alarm company that his alarm was going off. He responded that it was not a false alarm. The alarm company called the police. So did the citizen, who headed home. On the way, either he or another person contacted by the alarm company also called the Detroit police and notified his wife, who met him at their debased domicile.
He and his wife beat the police to the scene. After an assessment of the situation, they entered the house to survey the damage. While upstairs, they heard the thieves returning for more goodies. Horrified, and trapped, they huddled in a closet and called the police again.
The voice on the other end of the phone did nothing to sooth their fears. The dispatcher told them; (I’m paraphrasing), “We received and logged the prior calls concerning this incident.” “A car has been dispatched.” “Stop calling.”
Okay, stick a pin.
For all of you who do not live in Detroit, here’s a test. What would you do?
- Cuss out the dispatcher and demand a car right now.
- Man-up, go downstairs and confront the bad guys.
- Continue to hide in the closet and hope you are not discovered.
- Call your councilwoman for back up.
The correct answer is D. Call your councilwoman for back up.
The Calvary to the rescue
As fate would have it, the young man happened to have the number of Joann Watson, a Detroit city councilwoman, in his cell phone. He placed a whispered call to Ms. Watson, who sensed the fear in the man’s voice and called a high-ranking police officer. If I recall correctly…a car responded about four hours after the original call was placed.
This is but one of many, many examples of poor police response since the departmental reorganization in 2005.
Interim Mayor Kenneth Cockrel Jr. announced the appointment of James Barren to Chief of Police. Recently, Mayor Cockrel and Chief Barren pledged to open some closed Detroit police mini-stations…budget allowing.
The 1999 repeal of the 1930s-era Glass-Steagal Act, requiring separation of commercial and investment banking, represented significant change in how our financial institutions operated. Ironically, it was President Clinton who repealed it. The Foundry, a blog hosted by the Heritage Foundation, quoted Democratic House Leader Steny Hoyer, as saying “A stark failure of the economy and this administration’s (Bush), laissez faire, take the referee off the field…let anyone do whatever they want to do and everything will be fine,” contributed to our financial woes.
A similar deregulation occurred in Detroit that fateful day in October, when former Police Chief Bully Cummings closed half of Detroit’s police precincts. In the meantime, as on Wall Street, lawbreaking in Detroit has been elevated into an art form.
- Even so, I’ll bet the new chief catches more bad guys in three months in Detroit (budget increase or no budget increase), than Congress does on Wall Street with $700 billion dollars in three years
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