Charlie LeDuff to Mayor Bing: It's Time to Deal with the Murder

DETROIT - Dave, do something!

The punks are running wild. Blood is running in the streets and not a peep out of you, your minions in city hall or your police chief.

Detroit had more murders than any other city but one in America in the month of January regardless of population, location or any other yardstick – every city except for Chicago.

Because of a very bad last week to the month, Chicago clocked in with 40 homicides.

Detroit was right behind with 38.

Of course Chicago has 2.7 million residents. Detroit has slightly more than 700,000 people.

At that rate:

• If Detroit had as many people as Chicago we would have had 152 murders in a single month.
• If Detroit were the size of New York we would have had 418 murders. Imagine the headlines! But New York had 26 murders for the month of January.
• If Detroit were the size of Philadelphia we would have had 80 murders. Philadelphia had 32.
• If Detroit were the size of Los Angeles we would have had 217 murders. But Los Angeles suffered 31 murders.

Get the point, Dave?

Detroit is a war zone and you haven’t acknowledged it or made it a priority since you took office. Philly is up in arms. Chicago put more cops on the streets and you threaten cuts to an already beleaguered police force.

You can blame it on lack of money. You can blame it on a population that has a lack of work. A lack of education. A lack of hope. A lack respect for life. And you’d be right. Not much you can do there. It’ll take decades to right those social ills.

But there is a lack of respect for the law. And you do have control over that. A breaking and entering that ends with two men stabbed to death. A 12-year-old shot in a dispute over a cell phone. The corpse of a Grosse Pointe Park woman dumped in your back alley.

Yes, you own that one too. Why was she dumped in Detroit like an old couch? Because in Detroit you can get away with it.

You need a strategy, Dave. Something more than virtual precincts. Something more than secretaries in patrol cars. Something more than a knee-jerk reaction when the murder rate spikes and your chief of police floods the zone with cops until a half-million dollars in overtime is burned up in two weeks.

The chief admitted that homicide and shooting vicitims were way up last year but said all other violent crime is down. Not even Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy believes that one.

You accused the governor of giving “lip service” when it comes to bailing out Detroit. You can fight over who should control Detroit’s budget. But the streets of Detroit are out of control.

I heard Gov. Snyder say that Detroit needs a holistic approach to curing its murder problem. That includes cops and courts and jails and prosecutors and parole officers and a functioning 911 system.

Maybe you could invite him to dinner. People’s lives are depending on it.