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Charlie LeDuff is the author of "Sh*tshow!: The Country’s Collapsing . . . And the Ratings Are Great," coming May 22 from Penguin Press.
By Charlie LeDuff
A mentally deranged man short on his medications threatens to kill himself a few blocks from the Wayne County government building. He strips his belt from his trouser loops, wraps it around his neck and attempts to hang himself by his arms.
The unfinished Wayne County Jail.
This, he eventually realizes, defies the law of physics. The man then rushes into traffic, attempting to commit suicide by car. This hope, too, proves hopeless as commuters simply drive around him. Finally, he screams for the police to shoot him dead before he shoots everyone else dead. But there are no police available in downtown Detroit.
The deranged man is eventually calmed with a box of warm supper and a tasty dessert cake provided by a local restaurateur and sent on his way to his camp in the trees or an abandoned building.
There is too little money to attend to the needs of the mentally ill marauding the streets of Wayne County, we are told. Mental health services and the riddle of how to fund them is a big topic in America these days.
So, where can the money be found by county government?
Gilbert's Great Deal
I may know of a place here in Detroit. Just hours before this episode and just of few blocks away, the county board of commissioners voted Tuesday to support the sell-off of the land of the failed Wayne County jail site to billionaire Dan Gilbert -- for less than the county paid.
Gilbert will not sign a reciprocal contract to build a new $533 million county criminal justice complex until he is first sold the land. This, of course, would leave the county taxpayer in the lurch should Gilbert walk away once he acquires the land.
Dan Gilbert
(The official vote Thursday morning is little more than a formality).
Despite this being the biggest municipal deal going, no reporters bothered to attend. There were lawyers, however. Plenty of lawyers. Lawyers in Polo socks. Lawyers with monogrammed cuffs. Lawyers with brown loafers and hair product.
Shockingly, nobody in the room of politicians and lawyers seemed to know much. How much had the county wasted on the last jail deal? ($300 million +) What governmental entity will eventually own the new justice complex? Why will the new complex sit next to the garbage dump and incinerator. Or why will Gilbert pay less for the failed-jail property than the county did during the great Recession, adjusting for inflation and clean-up and maintenance costs.
Mortgage Fraud Trial in 2019
Add to that, the fact that the county is still exposed to a potential $175 million penalty from the IRS for abandoning the previous jail project. And remember, Gilbert might not have the money to follow through if he loses the massive mortgage fraud case brought against his company by the U.S. Justice Department, scheduled for trial next year.
Still, the commissioners were told, Gilbert would not commit to building the new complex until he got the failed-jail property because the mortgage mogul did not want to be exposed to risk .
So, now Gilbert holds the cards and the risk is assumed by Wayne County residents; people like my widowed mother who lives on a fixed income along a crumbling road on the west side that is supposed to be maintained by the county with deranged homeless guys living under a nearby overpass.
The Wayne County Building Authority board, which actually owns the failed jail, met on Wednesday, the morning after the deranged man's street performance, and it too voted to sell to Gilbert.
It was the same board of commissioners who oversaw the collapse of the last jail project, except for Sam Hussein, a man who was charged with car theft back in 2007, according to city documents. Hussein insisted on showing me legal documents concerning his troubled past and assured me that his position on the authority was not the product of cronyism, but rather his resume.
Another board commissioner, Jim Saros, acknowledged troubles over the years with the competing jail projects, but insisted that the latest one was not only the best deal on the table, it was always the only deal on the table.
Mistakes had been made, Saros told his colleagues before their unanimous vote to sell to Gilbert. Mistakes will naturally be made again, he said. And then Saros, wanting to make the point that hindsight is 20/20, quoted his favorite line from Thomas Jefferson: "If I could read tomorrow's newspapers today."
Thomas Jefferson
Strangely, no Jefferson authority could attribute such a quotation to him: not the University of Virginia which was founded by Jefferson, nor could it be found in the best-selling Jefferson biography, nor was there mention of it on Wikiquotes.
What Jefferson did say was the following: "I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
Which begs the question: Where did the deranged hangman sleep? In an abandoned building or the woods near my mother's house on the crumbling road in the west end of Wayne County?
