Understaffed Detroit Police Say Enter the City at Your Own Risk. Abandon all hope ye who enter here. Here being Detroit. “Detroit is America’s most violent city, its homicide rate is the highest in the country, and yet the Detroit Police Department is grossly understaffed,” said DPOA attorney Donato Iorio. “The DPOA believes that there is a war in Detroit, but there should be a war on crime, not a war on its officers.” Over the summer, city officials reduced the police department’s budget by nearly $75 million in an attempt to attack the city’s large deficit. Because of this, local law enforcement was forced to make cuts resulting in the elimination of nearly 400 jobs. “Officers are leaving simply because they can’t afford to stay in Detroit and work 12-hour shifts for what they are getting paid,” said Iorio.
“These police officers are beyond demoralized. As Detroit breaks down, scourge of arson burns out of control. Big Three Automakers Outsourcing To Mexico. The Big Three automakers in the U.S. – Ford, Chrysler and GM – are under fire for outsourcing to Mexico. GM and Chrysler have been given billions in aid from the U.S. government to keep them operational during the downturn in the economy.
Now, Washington is criticizing the automakers for offshoring manufacturing jobs as a sign of taking undue benefit of the North American Free Trade Agreement. There has been much controversy over outsourcing after President Obama has taken office. Though he mentioned that he would support trade policies with favored nations like India prior to his election, that rhetoric has soon turned into a halt of outsourcing, the same nations on the receiving end, such as India.
In a State of the Union speech, the President said he would revoke tax breaks to outsourcing firms. The American automakers have been furnished aid in the form of $80 billion amid the economic downturn that roiled financial markets and in the credit crisis. Detroit and Deindustrialization | Dollars & Sense. This article is from Dollars & Sense: Real World Economics, available at This article is from the September/October 2013 issue of Dollars & Sense magazine. Questions and Answers with Barry Bluestone By Barry Bluestone | September/October 2013 This July, the city of Detroit—half a century ago the jewel of U.S. industry and technology, and the unofficial capital of the U.S. labor movement—declared bankruptcy. Since its heyday in the 1950s, Detroit has seen the departure of most of the auto plants, first to surrounding suburbs, then further afield, and a downward spiral of the city’s economy.
The loss of population—fueled by suburbanization, “white flight,” the loss of jobs, and the deterioration of city services—followed. The factors involved in the city’s bankruptcy include multiple issues covered in the pages of Dollars & Sense in recent years. Detroit’s Heyday: A One-Industry Town Packard Automotive Plant, East Grand Boulevard on Detroit’s east side, 2006.
Rush Limbaugh: Detroit Went Bankrupt Because Blacks Drove Out Whites. By Alan Pyke and Igor Volsky Economists are attributing Detroit’s recent bankruptcy filing to problems facing the entire Rust Belt region: a shrinking tax base, high health and pension costs, sprawl, and general dysfunction. But on Tuesday, Rush Limbaugh added another cause to the long list of factors that have contributed to the city’s downfall: black people. During an appearance on Fox News’ On The Record with Greta Van Susteren on Tuesday, Limbaugh claimed that “unchecked” Democratic rule “since the last Republican mayor [in] 1957” created a lazy and bloated culture of out-of-control spending and corruption. LIMBAUGH: You have massive welfare states where citizens are given things left and right in order to buy their votes. And in the case of the — you throw race into the mix and you bring on Mayor Coleman Young who causes riots in 1967 in Detroit and Mayor Young caused a white flight to suburbia, and Detroit is left with nothing but liberal Democrats running it.
Marilyn Salenger: ‘White flight’ and Detroit’s decline. By Marilyn Salenger By Marilyn Salenger July 21, 2013 Marilyn Salenger is president of Strategic Communications Services and a former correspondent and news anchor for several CBS stations. An almost palpable sadness has swept across the country at the news that the city of Detroit has filed for bankruptcy. While the possibility of this had been discussed, the reality of what was once the fourth-largest city in the United States sinking to such depths is disheartening, a moment people will remember for years to come. To understand that the decline and bankruptcy represent so much more than dollars and cents requires a step back to a time that many would prefer to forget but remains unforgettable.
In the late 1960s,racial tensions engulfed parts of our country, at the cost of lost lives and abject destruction. It was the beginning of the ending we are now seeing for a city that once stood tall with head held high. Opinions Orlando Shooting Updates post_newsletter348 follow-orlando true after3th. The Downfall of Detroit: White Flight and the 1967 Race Riots | husseinbazzi. The 1967 Detroit riot, also known as the 12th Street riot, was a civil disturbance in Detroit, Michigan that began in the early morning hours of Sunday, July 23, 1967.
The precipitating event was a police raid of an unlicensed, after-hours bar then known as a blind pig, on the corner of 12th (today Rosa Parks Boulevard) and Clairmount streets on the city’s Near West Side. Police confrontations with patrons and observers on the street evolved into one of the deadliest and most destructive riots in United States history, lasting five days and surpassing the violence and property destruction of Detroit’s 1943 race riot, which occurred 24 years earlier. To help end the disturbance, Governor George Romney ordered the Michigan National Guard into Detroit, and President Lyndon B. Johnson sent in Army troops. The result was 43 dead, 467 injured, over 7,200 arrests, and more than 2,000 buildings destroyed (Rutgers.edu). Works Cited Feagin, Joe R.. Like this: Like Loading... Detroit Redlining Map 1939 | DETROITography. Part of Detroit’s history of racial discrimination is comprised on housing discrimination, which in turn contributed to job discrimination, interpersonal racism, and continued racial inequity of opportunity.
These areas of Detroit were targeted for “urban renewal” in the 1960s which displaced thousands of black residents to public housing complexes. Today these areas of Detroit have more vacancy (see map) than others either because the redlined properties were managed by slumlords whose properties deteriorated (see map) more quickly or from renewal efforts that didn’t consider the displacement of black residents. The racial divisions we see in our neighborhoods today are the result of deliberate actions taken in the past. (State of Opportunity) This segregation of housing, which was legal up until the 1980s, also furthered school segregation and the inadequate education of Detroit’s black children. More from State of Opportunity: You can find other HOLC maps online at: urbanoasis.org.
What became of Detroit? As Detroit approaches a new turn in its difficult journey over the past several decades, the imposition of an Emergency Financial Manager by the governor of Michigan (link), many people are asking a difficult question: how did we get to this point? The features that need explanation all fall within a general theme -- the decline of a once-great American city. The city's population is now roughly 40% of its peak of almost two million residents in 1950 (link); the tax revenues for city government fall far short of what is needed to support a decent level of crucial city services; the school system is failing perhaps half of the children it serves; and poverty seems a permanent condition for a large percentage of the city.
The decline is economic; it is political; it is demographic; it is fiscal; and it is of course a decline in the quality of life for the majority of the residents of the city. What about race and white flight? Another vicious circle in Detroit concerns schooling. Detroit’s Bankruptcy Reflects a History of Racism. This is black history month. It is also the month that the Emergency Manager who took political power and control from the mostly African American residents of Detroit has presented his plan to bring the city out of the bankruptcy he steered it into.
This is black history in the making, and I hope the nation will pay attention to who wins and who loses from the Emergency Manager’s plan. Black people are by far the largest racial or ethnic population in Detroit, which has the highest percentage of black residents of any American city with a population over 100,000.
Eighty-three percent of the city’s 701,000 residents are black. It continues to be an underreported story that a white state legislature and white governor took over the city and forced it to file for bankruptcy against the will of its elected representatives. It’s important to view what is happening to Detroit and its public employees through a racial lens. Government was involved at a more micro level as well.