The reflex action exhibited by a lot of Detroiters when Time magazine made the decision to camp out in our front yard and begin filing stories on our demise was shock, rage, horror, dismay.
Etc.
And while I do understand that reflex, because like most Detroiters I have grown bitterly accustomed to the onslaught of stories telling all of us what a pathetic lot we must be to be in the situation we’re in, I also think that sometimes you have to put your reflexes in check. Because while it’s true that Time’s overwhelming focus has been on what’s wrong, we at some point have to ask ourselves the question of, well, maybe is there a reason why a national magazine has taken such an interest? And we might also want to remind ourselves that although we as Detroiters will always be more conscious of the reasons why we continue to love and believe in this city than anyone who doesn’t live here will ever understand, we would have to be doubly blind not to see just how bad things are for us overall. I say this because we can’t honestly hope to ever pull ourselves out of this hole until we are honest with ourselves about how deep this Grand Canyon really is.
That being said (I really didn’t intend for that long of an intro to get to the point? But then that’s the cool thing about blogs is you got more room to speculatively ramble while your brain tries to figure out where you’re going with all this), there does finally appear to be some relatively good news on the Assignment Detroit site worth repeating for the benefit of all of us who have a problem with murder. According to one of the site’s subsections called “The Detroit Blog: One Year. One City. Endless Opportunities), Mayor Bing and Detroit Police Chief Warren Evans held a press conference today where they were able to report that the number of homicides in Detroit dropped by 16 percent – from 111 this time last year to 96 currently – and that 60 percent of our city’s homicides have been solved during the third quarter of this year, which is up from a rather dismal 35 percent during that same period one year ago. And it’s not insignificant to note that this measure of improvement is happening with a police force that has been chopped down by 25 % due to the ongoing budget crisis.
So while I’m quite sure Time will continue to keep the light shining on our festering wounds, they deserve a bit of credit here for at least making an effort to bring some of the better news to light as well. As for the festering wounds, it wasn’t Time that put them there. So screw the cameras and the furiously scribbling scribes. This ain’t the first time we’ve dealt with that. We’ve got some patching up to do.
