black city – praag.org

Detroit water shutoffs ‘racially’ motivated

After a class action lawsuit filed against the city of Detroit, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund says that recent water shutoffs to Detroit residents were racially motivated.

Veronica Joice with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund says, “That (the shutoffs are) being done in a discriminatory fashion; and they should at least take a look at whether there’s a better way to do this that doesn’t affect the most vulnerable citizens — the majority of whom are African American here in Detroit.”

Attorney Alice Jennings, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of Detroit residents, said it’s a known fact that there are corporations that owe hundreds of thousands of dollars to the city of Detroit Water and Sewerage Department.
“These companies are basically Caucasian companies,” Jennings said. “The folks who are being cut off are almost one hundred percent African American.”

Asked by WWJ’s Charlie Langton directly if this is a “racial issue,” Jennings replied: “It sure is! You bet it is.”

The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department stopped service to about 7,200 homes and businesses in June, compared to 1,570 in the same month last year. Water was restored to 43 percent after customers paid or worked out payment plans.

At a bankruptcy hearing Monday, federal Judge Steven Rhodes asked the city for an update on the water issue, but fell short of ordering any action.

Talking to WWJ’s Sandra McNeil shortly after the announcement, water department spokesman Greg Eno admitted there’s no doubt that the department has been lax over the years, letting the bills pile up.

He said people who now owe more than they can afford are being asked to come in and apply for assistance through the Water Affordability Program.

Eno said, through, it’s not just free money.

“We don’t have, you know, a bottomless cup of funds,” he said, adding that’s why it’s important that affected customers come in as soon as possible.

How a black city cheats to lower the murder rate

It’s always dangerous to put too much value into government statistics. Even when it comes to murders, which you would think would be difficult to hide, the numbers can be manipulated.

Matthew Yglesias writes:

The big problem with making murders disappear (apart from it being illegal and immoral) is that, compared to other crimes, it’s much more likely that you’ll be caught. For example, Patrick Walker was found injured and unresponsive in a crashed automobile, taken to a hospital where he died, then during an autopsy they found a gunshot wound in his head and a bullet casing in the back seat of the car. Owing to the fact that he was clearly shot and killed, this was filed on his death certificate as a murder. But the Chicago Police Department has classified the case as a death investigation, making it disappear from their stats.

Chicago Magazine reports:

On October 28, a pathologist ruled the death of Tiara Groves a homicide by “unspecified means.” This rare ruling means yes, somebody had killed Groves, but the pathologist couldn’t pinpoint the exact cause of death.

Given the finding of homicide—and the corroborating evidence at the crime scene—the Chicago Police Department should have counted Groves’s death as a murder. And it did. Until December 18. On that day, the police report indicates, a lieutenant overseeing the Groves case reclassified the homicide investigation as a noncriminal death investigation. In his writeup, he cited the medical examiner’s “inability to determine a cause of death.”

That lieutenant was Denis Walsh—the same cop who had played a crucial role in the alleged cover-up in the 2004 killing of David Koschman, the 21-year-old who died after being punched by a nephew of former mayor Richard M. Daley. Walsh allegedly took the Koschman file home. For years, police officials said that it was lost. After theSun-Times reported it missing, the file mysteriously reappeared.

But back to Tiara Groves. With the stroke of a computer key, she was airbrushed out of Chicago’s homicide statistics.

The change stunned officers. Current and former veteran detectives who reviewed the Groves case at Chicago’s request were just as incredulous. Says a retired high-level detective, “How can you be tied to a chair and gagged, with no clothes on, and that’s a [noncriminal] death investigation?” (He, like most of the nearly 40 police sources interviewed for this story, declined to be identified by name, citing fears of disciplinary action or other retribution.)

Was it just a coincidence, some wondered, that the reclassification occurred less than two weeks before the end of the year, when the city of Chicago’s final homicide numbers for 2013 would be tallied? “They essentially wiped away one of the murders in the city, which is crazy,” says a police insider. “But that’s the kind of shit that’s going on.”

For the case of Tiara Groves is not an isolated one. Chicago conducted a 12-month examination of the Chicago Police Department’s crime statistics going back several years, poring through public and internal police records and interviewing crime victims, criminologists, and police sources of various ranks. We identified 10 people, including Groves, who were beaten, burned, suffocated, or shot to death in 2013 and whose cases were reclassified as death investigations, downgraded to more minor crimes, or even closed as noncriminal incidents—all for illogical or, at best, unclear reasons.

Near half of Detroit can’t pay water bills

Black city struggling

It’s a basic human right: water. But could the United Nations soon help the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department provide the service to struggling customers?

Water department spokeswoman Curtrise Garner says it’s a possibility — but for now, the water bills must be paid.

“We do have programs that do help those that are just totally in need; can’t afford it — but we also know that there are also people who can’t afford it would can not pay and we know this because, once we shut water off, the next day they are in paying the bill in full. So we do know that that has become a habit as well,” said Garner.

“At the DWAS Department — it’s not our goal to shut off water. We want people’s water on, just like they do; but you do have to pay for your water…That’s the bottom line.”

Garner said the reality is that nearly half of Detroit Water and Sewerage customers can’t pay their bills; and that has led activists to lobby the UN to step up and take action.

“If they do contact us we are willing to speak with them,” she said, adding “We owe it to the customers that are paying to collect from those that aren’t. Somebody has to pay for the water.”

And while Garner says water is “a God-given right,” she says there is a cost to move water from the water resource to the customer and that the infrastructure costs money.

According to the Free Press, the average Detroit water bill is now $75 a month — much higher than the nation’s average rate of about $40.

Source: CBS local

Bashing the black city

The often outspoken Oakland County Executive is once again in hot water over comments he made about Detroit in a recent interview with “New Yorker” magazine.

L. Brooks Patterson is quoted in an article titled “Drop Dead, Detroit!” as saying he only has negative things to say about the Motor City. He made the controversial comments while giving reporter Paige Williams an extended tour of Oakland County last September.

“Anytime I talk about Detroit, it will not be positive. Therefore, I’m called a Detroit basher,” he said. ”The truth hurts, you know? Tough s***.”

The 75-year-old Republican went on to say he warned his children never to travel to Detroit.

“I used to say to my kids, ‘First of all, there’s no reason for you to go to Detroit. We’ve got restaurants out here.’ They don’t even have movie theatres in Detroit — not one,” he said.

Patterson said the one thing Detroit offers that the suburbs can’t is live sports – and even then a trip to the city is quite risky.

“For that, fine — get in and get out,” he said. “But park right next to the venue — spend the extra 20 or 30 bucks. And, before you go to Detroit, you get your gas out here. You do not, do not, under any circumstances, stop in Detroit at a gas station! That’s just a call for a carjacking.”

He’s also quoted as saying a prediction he made has come to pass. He said, “What we’re going to do is turn Detroit into an Indian reservation, where we herd all the Indians into the city, build a fence around it, and then throw in the blankets and corn.”

A statement from Patterson’s office said the seven-page article casts the executive in a false light, but didn’t dispute the quotes or apologize for his actions.

The National Action Network, an organization founded by the Reverend Al Sharpton, is calling for a public apology from Patterson. The group is holding a news conference at 11 a.m. Tuesday to request the apology.

In a statement, Rev. Charles Williams II, the National Action Network’s Michigan chapter president, said Patterson’s remarks were “repulsive” — not just because Detroit is mostly a black city, but “because it is also a direct slight to the American Indians who occupied the land before Detroit was Detroit, and Oakland County.”

Source: CBS Detroit

Residents anxious as shootings in black Baltimore surge

The surge in violence continues in Baltimore as the police report more shootings, the last of which happened late Saturday in Northeast Baltimore.

Clergy and lawmakers are trying to calm anxious residents.

There have been three shootings in the last 24 hours in Baltimore. At least 40 shootings have happened in the last 10 days and 16 of them were deadly.

City clergy are now asking residents to step up and end this violent trend.

At Lafayette Avenue, a man is shot in the leg and at South Haven street, a woman is shot and killed.

“We’ve never had anything like this happen on Haven Street. I’ve been here for 15 years and never seen anything like that,” said concerned resident John Wrencher.

His block becomes the latest home to Baltimore’s nearly 40 shootings in two weeks. More than a dozen people are dead.

City clergy and members of 120 churches are rallying and praying this weekend for peace.

Even a 21-car motorcade drives through the city showing just how deadly this violent trend is becoming.

“If you put a police officer in every block, you still could not solve the program when the problem is inside of the individual, ” said Bishop Angel L. Nunez of Bilingual Christian Church.

This recent surge in shootings highlights the city’s problem with gun violence and homicide rate. So far this year, there have been around 117 homicides, the highest in six years.

But for Stephanie Rawlings Blake, it’s personal.

Her cousin, was gunned down last month near his home.

“Whether our homicide rate is 200 or 300 or one, we can never get that life back,” said Rawlings-Blake.

With the violence spotlighting Baltimore, the mayor said the solution starts with us.

“When we have a spike, we have cameras from all over the city, outside of the city, national reporters. I welcome them back for the miracle. I know that as you are standing here, you are not going to tolerate it,” said Rawlings-Blake.

City leaders say that call to action, may stop the next shot from being fired in your neighborhood.

In the latest shooting, an adult male was shot in the back on a basketball court. He is being treated for non life-threatening injuries at a local hospital.

Police plan to step up enforcement through Fourth of July weekend. – CBS

Setting a new record: Chicago’s murder rate

With still a few days to go until the new year, 40-year-old Nathaniel T. Jackson became the five-hundredth person killed in Chicago, Illinois since the start of 2012.

In 2011, the city saw only 435 homicides.

Superintendent Garry McCarthy confirmed to the Chicago Tribune late Thursday night that the passing of Mr. Jackson marked murder number 500 for the Windy City, and that no suspect had been identified by the police at that point. On Friday afternoon, though, the department issued a statement to the press reclassifying a death earlier in the week as being still under investigation. With that update, the slaying of Jackson makes him one murder shy of the 500 mark, but with a homicide rate of more than one per day, that milestone is expected to be met before 2012 comes to a close.

Discussing the grim news on Friday, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said it was “an unfortunate and tragic milestone, which not only marks a needless loss of life but serves as a reminder of the damage that illegal guns and conflicts between gangs cause in our neighborhoods.”

Emanuel, a former Obama administration staffer known like the president for his staunch pro-gun control stance, condemned the National Rifle Association earlier this month after the NRA’s vice president asked for armed guards in every school across America.

“That is not the right answer for our society, our schools and most importantly our children,” Emanuel said.

Even as adamantly opposed to guns on the streets as Emanuel is, however, the mayor has a seemingly impossible task of turning around a surge in violent crimes as murders have skyrocketed under his administration. According to the police statistics provided to the Tribune, “homicides were up 17 percent over last year in Chicago, and shootings had increased by 11 percent.”

All the way back in June, Roseanna Ander of the University of Chicago Crime Lab warned The Daily that Chicago was already on the path to having a particularly bloody year.

“Violence has always been most pronounced on summer weekends in Chicago,” Ander said, adding, “One likely factor is the warmer-than-usual weather and the early spring. Over 80 percent of shootings occur outdoors and in public places.”

Ander’s prediction proved right, and as the summer months progressed matters were only made worse. In late August, 19 people were shot in a single evening in Chicago. It may have been a big number at the time, but was only a few shots beyond what the city saw months earlier.

“Over the Memorial Day weekend, in a 72-hour period, we had 12 people killed and another 45 people shot.” WBEZ Chicago Public Radio host Robert Wildeboer told National Public Radio during a July 10 interview.

“Thirteen people were shot in one 90-minute stretch, and so that’s really focusing public attention on this issue right now,” Wildeboer added. “You know, just last night, eight people were shot in the city of Chicago. But some of the numbers were just so shocking, A, that murder’s up 40 percent over last year. B, there have been a number of really violent weekends in Chicago where the numbers are just so striking, everybody’s just, like, what in the world?”

The last time Chicago saw this many deaths in a single year was 2008, when 512 people were killed. Meanwhile in New York, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly says the murder rate in the Big Apple is down nearly 19 percent in 2012.

“I’m thankful for the fact that this year there will be the lowest number of murders that we’ve had since we started to record them in 50 years, even though the population is as high as it’s ever been,” Kelly tells reporters this week.