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Fear & stoicism in Detroit: the police/fire/EMS crisis

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  • Fear & stoicism in Detroit: the police/fire/EMS crisis

    Concentrating on services in this post, so I edited out most of the economic/political stuff. This is now way past politics.

    Basically, if you need emergency help in Detroit you either hitch a ride, suffer it out, fight 'em off or die.

    Need a cop? Barbarians at the gate**? Good luck, hope you got your guns & ammo ready. Get a carry license. Get with your neighbors & patrol your own streets. Making matters worse, the County Executive (under investigation himself) fired 50 County prosecutors serving Detroit and its suburbs. The State Supreme Court had to take over the Detroit city courts for mismanagement.

    Just today there was a report of a man whose girlfriend heart attack at home. He called 911 to get an EMS unit and was told none were available for some time. He tried driving her himself, but she died. A few weeks ago a child was injured. He likely would have survived if an EMS had arrive in time. It didn't. Two of hundreds of such incidents.

    Not to mention last week the police/fire/EMS dispatch system went down and they're still putting it back together. The Michigan State Police had to give them some of their bandwidth.

    ** Home Invasion (a serious felony): generally, the forceful entry of an occupied, private dwelling with violent intent to commit a crime against the occupants, such as robbery, assault, rape, murder, or kidnapping. So many in the Detroit area there's a multi-jurisdictional task force and many people carry their holstered firearms at home.

    http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/2..._dial_911.html

    Fear and stoicism in Detroit, where many hesitate to dial 911

    (Source: NY Times)

    DETROIT » A question unimaginable in most major American cities is utterly commonplace in this one: If you suddenly found yourself gravely ill, injured or even shot, would you call 911?

    Many people here say the answer is no. Some laugh at the odds of an ambulance appearing promptly, if ever. In Detroit, people map out alternative plans instead, enlisting a relative or a friend.

    As officials negotiate urgently with creditors and unions in a last-ditch effort to spare Detroit from plunging into the largest municipal bankruptcy in the nation's history, residents say the city has worse problems than its estimated $18 billion debt.

    "The city is past being a city now; it's gone," said Kendrick Benguche, whose family lives on a block with a single streetlight, just down from a vacant firehouse that sits beside a burned-out home. The Detroit police's average response time to calls for the highest-priority crimes this year was 58 minutes, officials now overseeing the city say. The department's recent rate of solving cases was 8.7 percent, far lower, the officials acknowledge, than clearance rates in cities like Pittsburgh, Milwaukee and St. Louis.

    "I guess I'll be glad if someone else takes over and other people run this thing," Benguche said. "The way I look at it, the city is already bankrupt."
    >
    > (Rehash of the economic issues)
    >
    "Bankruptcy scares me," said LaTanya Boyce, a nurse practitioner. She urges her patients to treat health concerns before they become acute because, she said, "if they find themselves calling 911, it's probably too late."

    But as with many who have wrestled with the practical realities of living in this city, Boyce said she would not mind if some entity other than the city took over the management of Belle Isle, a park whose plan was conceived in the early 1880s by Frederick Law Olmsted. Boyce goes to the park for exercise, wearing a fanny pack that at times contains a gun — "Do you see any city police here?" — and bemoaning several locked restrooms that have portable toilets planted in front of them.
    >
    Frank Ponder, 45, who works at a hospital here, said major changes in the city, even bankruptcy, now seem all but certain. "Everybody had all these ideas about saving Detroit, and nobody's ideas actually worked," he said. "At a certain point, you have to stop fooling yourself."

    The East Side house in which Ponder lives, once owned by his grandmother, is the only one on his block that appears to be occupied. He has been saving money for years in hopes of moving this fall to a suburb, Warren — and he expects to just walk away.

    "What can you do?" he said. "Sell it? On that block?"

    While corporations announced this year that they would donate money to the city in part to lease new emergency vehicles, there have been times in 2013, the authorities acknowledge, when only 10 to 14 of Detroit's 36 ambulances have actually been in service. Some of the city's emergency medical service vehicles have as many as 300,000 miles on them, so they tend to break down.

    All this helps explain why Ponder said he, as so many here, would try to get himself to a hospital before seeking help from Detroit.

    "If you have a heart attack, you're dead," he said. "There is no such thing around here as ‘in case of emergency.'"
    Dr. Mordrid
    ----------------------------
    An elephant is a mouse built to government specifications.

    I carry a gun because I can't throw a rock 1,250 fps

  • #2
    What's the crime rate like there?

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by UtwigMU View Post
      What's the crime rate like there?
      Read it & weep. 2011 numbers, worse now.

      Crime type , Rate/100,000

      Violent crime (all): 2,137.4 (1 in 47 are victimized)
      Homicide: 48.2 (US avg.: 4.7)
      Forcible rape: 59.8 (surveys say 70-80% unreported)
      Robbery: 695.6
      Aggravated assault: 1,333.6
      Burglary: 2,242.4
      Larceny-theft: 2,307.2
      Motor vehicle theft: 1,593.8
      Arson: 134.1
      Last edited by Dr Mordrid; 11 July 2013, 18:48.
      Dr. Mordrid
      ----------------------------
      An elephant is a mouse built to government specifications.

      I carry a gun because I can't throw a rock 1,250 fps

      Comment

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