DETROIT — I KNOW an old woman who hasn’t opened her windows in a decade,
afraid that what’s outside will climb inside. Inside, there is the
stale odor of dead air.
I know another woman who called me about a corpse lying outside her window for six and a half hours. This was because of cutbacks at the morgue. No dignity in death here. They do it better in Baghdad.
The latest trend? When a person is murdered, he is thrown into an
abandoned house, and it is set on fire. There are tens of thousands to
choose from.
I know of an 11-year-old boy who was shot, the bullet going clean
through his arm. The cops stuffed him in the back of a squad car and
rushed him to the hospital. That’s how we do it. There was no ambulance
available. About two-thirds of the city’s fleet is broken on an average day.
I know a cop who drives around in a squad car with holes in the
floorboards. There is no computer, no air-conditioning, the odometer
reading 147,000 miles. His bulletproof vest has expired. His pay has
been cut 10 percent.
For the rest of the story: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/26/opinion/come-see-detroit-americas-future.html
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