“We’re paramilitary, but we’re positive. I’m not a vigilante. I’m an agent of change.” – Threat Management Center owner and Detroit resident Dale Brown [above] quoted in thedaily.com article 911 Is A Joke

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

38 COMMENTS

    • You clearly haven’t been to Detroit. Palmer Woods is nice. And now I know why. You must have meant, “These guys are working.”

  3. What type of serious bodyguard dresses like that? Explain to me how looking out of place is tactical…

  5. Chicago IS slowly getting that bad too. except here we dont have full second ammendment rights. We cant even defend ourselves in our own garages legally.

  6. Another thought, this might be forboding to the future, where the wealthy can afford private police forces and the cimmon man must rely on themselves for justice.

    • The future is now. Already the wealthy have good security and fast response times. Their buildings have guards and security, as do hospitals. The politicians have arranged for their tax-payer-funded police “details.” Who actually is under threat everyday? People commuting on foot and by mass-transit through rough neighborhoods. People whose neighborhoods are gang-infested. $150 million has been spent on massive video security for lower Manhattan, the financial district. And they last got blitzed by? Commercial jets. The powerful call you paranoid. They call themselves? “Highly visible.”

  7. If you haven’t done so, and some of the comments suggest you’ve only read the quote of the day, read the entire article to see what the death of a city looks like–no matter what Eastwood might say. There IS blood in the streets, and now the people are starting to take matters into their own hands. Promising.

  8. I could care less how the guy dresses. These people have been left out in the cold by the local government sworn to protect them. Even with limited training and tools, I’m glad they have the resolve to stand up for themselves and provide protection the government cannot or is unwilling to deliver.

    • i agree, although the “urban camo” the dude in the pic is wearing is not the coolest, i think their approach to the situation is admirable. it would seem that residents here need to form a kind of neighborhood watch, with guns of course.

    • I don’t get the bashing. Plenty of youtube mall ninjas are at least as goofy. These people are actually doing something.

  9. So if enough of the citizens in Detroit reduce the numbers of criminal elements on their own, other municipalities may see that they can decrease their own law enforcement numbers. Talk about a cost cutting measure.

    • Definitely. Disarming citizens was expensive. Reversing the learned helplessness is, we could guess, both healthy and cost-effective.

  10. Educate me. I’m not sure I see a problem with this organization. They’re volunteer based. They were formed in response to rising crime and decreasing police response. Isn’t this the way it should be? Fewer police and more citizens policing themselves?

  13. “Where else do the police come to your house after you’ve been robbed and ask you, ‘Why did you call us?’ ”

    THAT my friend is quote of the day.

  15. Good article.

    Detroit is also on the cutting edge of urban farming, since all the grocery stores are closing, and there’s a lot of vacant land. This is likely our future, folks. Increasingly, we’ll have to do for ourselves, as resources are diverted upward to the (cough) 1%.

    The rich already have private security in most cities – they’re called the Police. If you’re poor and/or black (or whatever), maybe got busted for some minor beef at some point, you’re already looking at the police as a last resort, since they’re as likely to hassle you as not. The main job of the police in most cities is to protect the haves from the have-nots. I know many individual cops are decent people who will disagree, but that’s how it ultimately shakes out.

    While there is a difference between self defense and vigilantism, I imagine it gets pretty fuzzy in the absence of any effective law enforcement – the cops are not minutes away when seconds count, they might not come until tomorrow, if at all.

    I’ll grind my axe again about the fact that many people lose their 2nd Amendment (and voting) rights bececause of minor, non-violent, usually drug-related crimes they committed when they were young. We talk about Chicago, but there are easily a Chicago’s worth of people all over the country who cannot legally own firearms because of drug convictions. Given that these people are vastly disproportionately black, I’ll bet there are a lot of them in Detroit.

    Finally, check out 911 Is A Joke, Public Enemy, 1990. I’m sure PE is big with the TTAG crowd:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ-ldcnhsLY

    • Agree with NCG. The removal of gun rights due to non-violent offenses, especially DUI, weed possession, or non-violent misdemeanors, is wrong. Many states upped ‘maximum possible sentences’ for these misdemeanors to more than a year-and-a-day to insure judges could keep an eye on substance abuse for a few years, making sure the offender got on the right track, and almost always by means of probation. These states, incidentally, seem not to make those same ‘long misdemeanor’ offenses a basis for gun rights restrictions. College kids (and working non-college kids…) shouldn’t bear such a burden for relatively youthful mistakes. What is more, many offenses which are 30 or 90-day maximums in one state while being up to two years in another. Gun rights should not depend on the state the people lived in at the time of a minor or non-violent offense.

      • And it’s not college kids who usually get busted. It’s kids on the street. College kids commit all sorts of drug felonies with little fear of getting caught (don’t ask me how I know). Kids selling weed on the corner sooner or later go down. I take the Libertarian view that all drugs should be legal, but even if you don’t, the current system is totally unfair.

        • +1

          People who are fortunate enough to go to college don’t realize this. The police who come on campus see college kids as those who “have a future” but will bust people of the same age from town for a small amount of marijuana. Makes it kinda funny when they write you a ticket for going 5 above the speed limit and tell you “the law is the law.”

        • I would agree. The War on Drugs is a war on people. I think I got that out of a Libertarian pamphlet.
          So is Gun Control.

  16. Small correction , RF, I think it’s “Threat Management Center.” “Threat Management Group” is a big evil Pentagon contractor.

  18. “Anytime a life is lost, we’re concerned,” she said. “But we can‘t be on every corner in front of every home. And we know that there are citizens who will do what they have to do to protect themselves.”
    This quote from a police department spokesperson says it all.

  19. A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

  21. Someone told me recently that we should not make fun of the people living in Detroit, because they are living in “Mad Max” times. After reading the post about the EMT’s trying to hide during the New Year’s Eve shooting celebration, I totally believe it.

Comments are closed.