Angels’ Night
Halloween is almost upon us and that means smiling little faces of boys and girls, (if you can see them) ‘trick or treating’ up and down our residential streets. Unfortunately it also means some people will try to take advantage of the nights leading up to Halloween to torch abandoned homes and other malicious damage.
You can help prevent this from happening in any great numbers by volunteering to be an Angels’ Night appointee. The Mayor has already secured 784 people and they went door-to-door Saturday on Detroit’s East Side to recruit people to patrol neighborhoods, turn on porch lights and keep an eye out for suspicious activity Oct. 29-31. They are hoping to repeat this effort again this coming Saturday.
Appointees are to meet at 9 a.m. at Engine 54/Ladder 26 on the corner of Grand River and Trinity.
If you are interested in helping this worthy cause call 313-224-4415 or go to www.angelsnight.org.
Are there seriously any houses left to burn down on Detroit’s far east side? Go two blocks west of Alter Road sometime.
Seriously, Angels night is a good thing but the city could have used this years ago back when people used to burn down all the crack houses on Devil’s night.
as sort of a little social experiment i would kind of like to see what would happen if the city didn’t ask for half the citizens to watch the other half to make sure nothing gets torched one year. does anyone think that the “trend” of setting the city on fire is over?
Max, I think the trend is mostly over now. The problem with Devil’s Night in the 1980s and 1990s was twofold:
1. People wanted to leave the city but didn’t have the means, so they burned their houses down to collect insurance $$ to move to the burbs.
2. People wanted a good reason to burn down the neighborhood crackhouse.
Crime and arson were certainly a problem, but I suspect the above two reasons played a larger role in Devil’s night than what the statistics show.
Today, the crack epidemic is mostly over, anyone who wanted to leave the city has already left, and there’s not a whole lot left to burn in some places around the city.
The Angel’s night thing is well intentioned, but I think it’s more of a “community building” event now than a crime fighting effort (which I guess is a good thing).
I was surprised to read, “The crack epidemic is mostly over…” Any statistics to support this statement? My assumptions might be wrong, but I’ve heard (maybe not crack) that heroin usage has risen, not only in Detroit, but also the surrounding suburbs, so I assumed crack and cocaine remain drugs abused in the Metro urban city. Thoughts?