Urban Policing in 2030.

I posted this earlier, but you need to read this excellent piece of reporting by journalist Charlie LeDuff.

LeDuff authored the magnificent Detroit: An American Autopsy.

And after stints with the Detroit News and Fox 2, he's currently with a collective of veteran local journos at Deadline Detroit.

Here's a lengthy sample:

As the #DefundPolice movement gathers steam across the United States, it's worth asking what it means, exactly, to defund the police and what the consequences would be.

There is perhaps no better case study than the City of Detroit – one of America's most violent – which cut back its police force and funding during the historic bankruptcy, settled in 2014.

Funding for the police department has fallen 20 percent since then. Wages for police officers were cut 10 percent and have never recovered, accounting for inflation. Health benefits for retired officers were stripped away and pension payments deferred.

Consequently, Detroit is having severe problems attracting recruits and retaining cops. There are now 20 percent fewer officers patrolling the streets than in 2014. Half have less than five years on the job.

As George Hunter of the Detroit News (the only journalist in the state who covers the DPD full time) reported, “use of force” incidents have dropped nearly 60 percent since the department exited a 13-year federal consent judgment in 2014 over its excessive use.

That is encouraging, and may be due to better training. But morale and effort may also be contributing factors. Consider that arrests are down nearly 40 percent.

And now, in the hot summer of 2020, funding and morale troubles have come to roost. Violent crime has exploded in the streets of the Motor City, despite the three-month Covid-19 lockdown.

There have been 100 homicides so far this year, a 25-percent spike over last year and there have been 271 non-fatal shootings, representing an increase of 30 percent. Most disturbing, during 80 days of the COVID lockdown, 18 children were shot.

There is no doubt that human priorities in America's largest majority black city have gone neglected. Precious dollars have been diverted to private development. Outright graft has been a contributor to misery for decades.

The biggest public works project in Detroit since bankruptcy? A 2,000-bed jailhouse.

But public safety is, and must be, a top priority. Especially for children. Strip the police, and who will make the streets livable for our most vulnerable?

Read it all. Especially the interviews of young survivors of unsolved violent crimes.

If you want to see life in the wake of defund, look to Detroit. The overstretched force increasingly just secures crime scenes, collects shell casings and waits for the ambulance (if the victim is lucky) or draws chalk outlines and waits for the Wayne County Coroner (if the victim is not).

Not that many people outside of the victims, their families and officers themselves seem to care.

And when you consider what is going to happen to municipal and state budgets in the wake of the coronavirus shutdowns, all of this is coming soon to an urban statistical area near you.