In the Free Press, Brian Dickerson explores the relationship between Detroit's depleted police department and the mentality that leads to beatings like the one last Wednesday in which a group of men beat and kicked Steven Utash, a suburban tree trimmer on an east-side street.
In addition to the assault on Utash, who remains in critical condition, several homeowners have shot and killed people in recent weeks who were breaking into their houses.
Dickerson writes:
People don’t feel the need to take the law into their own hands when they can count on police to enforce it, and even those predisposed toward criminal behavior are less likely to assault or steal from their neighbors if they know they’re certain to be apprehended and punished.
That’s why what happened to Utash is considerably less likely to take place in downtown Detroit or the many suburban communities where police maintain a more visible presence than they do in Detroit’s depopulating residential neighborhoods.
Recognizing that the Detroit Police Department lacks the resources to maintain a high police profile throughout the city’s 139 square miles, those in the most cohesive and densely populated neighborhoods have organized crime-watch patrols in which citizen volunteers assume some of the surveillance duties historically reserved for uniformed officers.
I suspect that Police Chief James Craig meant only to encourage that spirit of self-reliance last December when he urged law-abiding Detroiters to arm themselves against the criminals in their midst. But Craig’s candor also may have fueled the frontier mentality that clearly animated some of Utash’s assailants.
It’s hardly rocket science to understand that citizens who have been urged to take up arms may come to see themselves as the city’s de facto first responders. What happened to Utash suggests that too much is left to chance when citizen-soldiers supplant trained police officers on the front lines.
