I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
Detroit interim Mayor Kenneth Cockrel, Jr. and the new Chief of Police James Barren, along with local community and business leaders held a gathering in the Mack Alter Square shopping center on the far east side at Mack and Outer Drive near Grosse Pointe Tuesday to celebrate the Detroit Police Department’s opening of four police mini stations. The event included a speech from both Cockrel and Barren.
About twenty local residents from the community and workers in the shopping center gathered around while Cockrel and Barren explained the significance of opening four mini police stations as part of an effort to connect the community with the police. Barren told the crowd (which consisted mainly of press and other police officers) that the mini stations will be operated by both sworn police officers and reserve officers as well as volunteers from the community. At these stations people can file complaints and police reports and share any information they feel that police should know about, he said.
“This is the grand opening of our brand new mini-station,” Barren said. “People can come here and talk about things going on in the community.”
But according to business owners and workers in Mack Alter Square, the police mini-station is not exactly new. Actually it’s being re-opened after being shut down for some time. “It’s been here a couple of years,” Lawrence Caldwell, district supervisor for Metro One security. Caldwell oversees security operations in Mack Alter Square shopping next door to the mini station. “When it shut down there was a big impact because there was a lot of crime in the parking lot here,” Caldwell told Michigan Messenger.
The local residents and workers in attendance showed mixed feelings about the opening of the mini police station. While some of them said they thought it would make the community safer, others said that it would not make any difference, citing that it had been open before with no great results.
“If someone’s going to steal something from me they’re going to steal something. There’s nothing that can be done,” said Hass, a local business owner in the shopping center.
This event is an effort to re-open the station, but the idea of having smaller police community outreach programs is not new to the DPD. “We’ve had mini stations in the past,” said a spokesperson for the Detroit Police. “We just wanted to re-open them.”
During a Q&A session after Cockrel and Barren spoke, one reporter asked about the locations of the four new mini stations pointing out that three of the four are on the east side of the city leaving only one on the West side.
Barren and Cockrel both took on the question stating that these stations were donations from business leaders who gave the space to the DPD.
“Part of the reason why these locations were selected is because we had corporate citizens that stepped forward and basically made the space available,” Cockrel said. Cockrel encouraged other business leaders to donate space to create mini stations in other Detroit communities. “These are really just the first four. Our game plan ultimately is to roll out additional stations in other parts of town,” Cockrel said.
The other locations that opened Tuesday were the Riverbend Plaza police mini station on E. Jefferson, the St. John’s Hospital police mini station on Moross, and one located within the Northwest Neighborhood City Hall on Grand River. The hours of operation are 2:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.
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