Police the police?
Thank you. I can't really say this enough to the fact you followed up on the Facebook post involving the raid at Jumbo's ("Raided again," News Hits, Feb. 29). Now, I can only ask that you don't accept the silence from Detroit Police Department and continue to press this issue. In a city with as much crime as we have, the fact the cops won't go out for robberies and shootings but will gather for a multiple-hour raid is disgusting. The tax dollars paying their salaries should not be wasted on the probability of a few MIP tickets until the real crime in our city is cleaned up. To the cops on that raid, while nine reported shootings happened, you could have possibly prevented a death or actually done some real police work and captured an additional suspect. Too bad you were trying to be "tax collectors" by raiding a totally legal venue. You should all be ashamed you weren't doing real police work.
Until these pointless (except to city coffers) raids are stopped and police are put to work trying to lower the multiple-hour response time for robberies, shootings and other crime, I want Metro Times on this case. Make it regular News Hits feature about how a bar got raided, but this many real crimes happened at the same time. Talk to the people reporting those crimes and find out the response time for the cops, who were wasting time handing out a few MIP tickets (or none, as in the case of Jumbo's). Then, take it to the next level and put every death or unsolved crime from those time periods on the cops' heads who went on the raid. That's a weekly News Hit I'd love to read.
As for the cops on the beat, as long as these raids keep happening, we the people don't want to hear any more crying about lack of resources as a reason your response times are so high. If that were true, you wouldn't be wasting this many cops on pointless raids of nonviolent clubs. Stop crying and do your job of protecting the city, not just filling the city's coffers! —Nicholas Papcun, Ferndale
Let them eat jobs
Jack, once again, your liberal spin is at full throttle! You mentioned today in a lengthy and most irritating way, that the GOP hasn't talked about the poverty-stricken children of our area ("GOP's appalling silence," Feb. 29). While the topic is sad, and in a perfect world it wouldn't exist, you clearly ignored what they have been talking about which will directly help these children: Jobs! (For their parents, obviously.) Jobs and a lower unemployment rate mean less poverty. Oddly enough, and maybe I just missed it, I haven't heard the Great Obama talk about the poverty-stricken children either, but I'm sure you meant to talk about that too. —Mike Conte, Roseville
