Writing on Bridge.com, Michigan Radio's Sarah Hulett discusses why she lives in Detroit, and how thinking about crime crime changes when you and your husband have two little girls.
I’ve lived in Detroit for the last 15 years. When I moved here, I knew that living in a city raised my chances of being a victim of crime. But the benefits, I thought, outweighed those risks. I loved – still love – the energy of the city, the history, the people.
Then I had two kids. And the calculus changed.
Hulett writes that even her middle-class, tight-knit neighborhood in northwest Detroit is not immune from crime. Three troubling incidents have taken place near her home over the past several months, including one around the corner that involved two neighbors walking their dog.
A car pulled up alongside them. A man got out, and pointed the barrel of his shotgun between Cathy’s eyes. He demanded money. “We don’t have money, we’re out walking our dogs,” Cathy told him. He became agitated. He threatened to shoot the dogs, and kill them. Cathy says she tried to push her house key deep into her pocket. She was afraid he’d demand to go into her house across the street, where her kids were sleeping.
Cathy, a neighborhood activist, moved out Feb. 1.
She tells of sitting at the dining room table with her husband, Brian, and asking him what he thinks about when he hears of incidents like that.
“That I’m crazy for living here with my family,” he tells me. “And I wonder, what am I doing? I need to do something about it. I need to move before something happens. Because if I don’t and something happens, I just… I don’t know how I could live with that.”
