Letter to President

I live in Flint Michigan. Where we have been distinguished, as the “second highest crime rate” and “fourth most dangerous city to live in the Untied States” by population. Flint has a serous crime problem. I’ve heard the arguments for prevention and intervention. These are great and grand ideas. However, we are way past that point, and our elected officials all of you, are either ignoring it or are not able to do anything about it. I believe you can!

Flint is in a downward spiral, as second generation criminals, constantly, are allowed to get away with crimes, because we don’t have the ability, to tackle the problem in earnest. It is apparent that Flint Michigan will never move forward as long as we remain at the top of the list in crime in the USA. Local leaders should be pressing for more jail space and more accountability from the Police Department. State Officials should be pressing state government for more jail space in Flint and funding for crime programs that work, such as COMPSTAT and Crime Mapping, GPS tracking for Police cars, mandatory electronic pawnshop item recording, Crime productivity software that allows police to make out complaints and forward information to investigations via computer in real time and then be able to search other databases by the click of a button (standardization of records and reporting).

Many in Flint have cried that we need more police officers in Flint. From Flint’s crime stats and police force manpower, this doesn’t seem likely. 267 sworn police officers for a city of approximately 118,000 citizens is one officer for every 442 citizens. We could also look at the crime stats for 2005 where if just the patrol division of the police department responded to every 911 call for 2005 they would have to respond to less than three per day! (If they only worked five days a week and only forty hours.) I have to wonder, with a city of one third living in or below poverty (39,000) how do maintain such a high level of manpower? Our property tax base and income tax base surely cannot support this many officers.

If the answer was to just hire more officers? Then, with the addition of more officers, I’m wondering where we will put all these criminals that they arrest? Flint only has the Genesee County Jail, and it has a capacity of approximately 700. In the last two weeks it’s been reported that criminals are being let out early, because of lack of jail space. Flint’s crime problem is nothing new. It’s just now our leaders are not taking this problem serious. We have a interim police chief who continues to go to Washington to lobby for funds for the police department. Always noting how crime has gone down in Flint over the last ten years. What he seems to continue to overlook is how crime is going up in leaps and bounds since he and our new administration took over the city from the State of Michigan’s financial takeover. Please, check the records for yourself. At this rate we should be at a higher crime level in 2006 than we were just 5 years prior.

Crime	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005
Murder	41	39	20	32	39	36	44	30	28	42	49
Rape	229	196	182	161	137	109	109	101	124	141	94
Robbery	1038	944	830	802	740	493	494	449	338	473	576
AggAssault	2639	2220	2427	2342	2180	1200	1310	1133	994	1672	2050
Burglary	4165	4168	3707	4188	3718	2490	2656	2261	2063	2477	2758
Larceny	7378	6408	6707	6672	5956	5025	4275	4398	3353	3214	3533
Auto Theft	2293	2698	2826	2020	1796	2257	1937	1342	1298	1563	1617
Arson	375	224	251	212	158	179	135	87	98	125	191
Totals	18158	16897	16950	16429	14724	11789	10960	9801	8296	9707	10868

% Change		-6.94%	0.31%	-3.07%	-10.38%	-19.93%	-7.03%	-10.57%	-15.36%	17.01%	11.96%

Prevention, Intervention, After-School Programs, etc, are all great programs that have some affect. However, we as a city and where we are today, we are way too far past that! Flint has second generation criminals, working within the judicial system. They already know, Flint cannot penalize criminals with a stiff enough penalty to discourage them from doing it again. Just read the local Journal when the sentencings are listed. It seems that 2^nd and 3^rd offenders are given probation, on top of or extended probation, for the probation violation, that they are already serving. Mandatory sentencing is not the solution. Larger jails may not even be the solution. However, it would be the most timely, simplest and effective suggestion to do, in order to remove these criminals from the streets.

Now, Flint cannot afford to build one. We’ve watched as good paying jobs have been lost to a protectionist policy of international free trade. Where, US policy, allows foreign companies protection, from paying state and local taxes for doing business in the community, while the US citizen, is expected to pick up the slack, while working lower wage jobs, with higher taxes and fees to cover the short falls in lost tax revenue from the higher wage jobs that have been lost. Now here is what I don’t understand. If the Federal Government can find the money to build two bridges: $229 million for the Gravina Island Bridge, connecting Gravina Island (pop. 50) to the town of Ketchikan (that’s four and a half million dollars per person why not just give them a million to move off the island); and $223 million for the Knik Arm Bridge, renamed Don Young’s Way after House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Don Young. Why can we not get help from the Federal Government to build a jail and house these career criminals we have in Flint? I’m told that we have thousands of warrants outstanding in Flint, that have not been served (I’m waiting on FIOA request to verify the true number). Even if we served those warrants, and made the arrests, where would we put those criminals?

The residents of Flint are paying for the high crime rate and your failure to solve the problem. We pay with the lives of our citizens. We pay with higher insurance rates (three to four times higher than living in the county). We pay with a lower standard of living since we cannot draw new business and industry into the heart of the city. It becomes a situation where who wants to move their business to a city, where it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll become a victim of crime. Considering that in 2005 there were 124,428 calls to 911 when that is more than the census records for number of citizens in Flint 120,681 in 2005.

Now granted, there are some simple things that Flint could do to help itself bring down its crime rates. However, our leadership seems baffled as to how to do this. Flint reversed its ten year trend of declining crime when we elected a Mayor who doesn’t take it seriously. Yes, we elected him. However, when our leadership failed with its finances the State took over. Why can’t we get someone to take over when our leaders fail to protect us? Providing for safety and law enforcement is the NUMBER ONE thing government has a responsibility to do. When Local Government fails, the state should step in. When the State Government fails, the Federal Government should step in. People are dying here in Flint, because of failed leadership and all’s we are getting is lip service. We need action and we need it yesterday!

Since our new mayor took control, his most notable arrests or use of the Flint Police Department has been: using them to arrest a newspaper carrier at City Hall, tying up seven police vehicles and twelve officers at a housing commission meeting, pulling police off citizens’ calls for help to investigate his political adversaries, who were legally obtaining signatures at polling places for his recall. He has gone as far as sending out investigators to one of his adversaries, because of a publicly made political threat of a recall. He has even begun a program that essentially fines citizens who had their car stolen in the City of Flint. And again, yes, we elected him. However, we shouldn’t have to pay for the failure of law enforcement under his administration and lack of leadership with increased crime. Someone, some authority, needs to step in!

If there is any place in the USA that should be under marshal law. It is Flint. We need to get these criminals off the streets. We need them arrested and put away. We can, at a later time look at rehabilitating; maybe later, helping them become productive members of society. However, as it stands right now. Crimes are being continuously overlooked in Flint. There are currently around five thousand complaints that have not been investigated in the Police Dept. Three Thousand of those complaints have suspects identified. Even if Police could go pick those criminals up, we have no place to put them. That is a problem we have RIGHT NOW! It is a major problem that needs to be fixed RIGHT NOW! We need the State to step in and help. We need the Federal government to step in and help. Somebody, please help!

There have already been studies done. It is less expensive to house these criminals than it is to continually let them operate and commit crimes without fear of punishment or receiving justice. There is also another study from 1996 that shows that the majority of crimes are committed by the same people over and over again, and that most of those are never investigated or solved, because of the low nature of the crimes. The study showed that the average felon had committed 187 crimes the year before they finally were sentenced to prison. Even if it was half that,124,428 / 93 per felon this would give us a need for arresting and putting away around 1400 criminals. We don’t know how many of those 3000 complaints that identify suspects, identify the same suspects. NO ONE IS ARRESTING THEM!

I know, I am not speaking for myself when I ask, when I plead, or when I beg you for your help! As Flint continues to run with its eyes wide open, further into the abyss, many of us have tired to help police. Only to be ridiculed for trying. Many of us have called police to turn in criminals or report criminal activity, only to have officers laugh at us over the phone, because they know nothing is ever going to come from making the report.

I desperately and respectfully plead for someone in our government to step up to the plate and look out for the citizens of this city.