Life in "Progress" City

From Detroit again, where apparently not only do you get no city services for high taxes, you get the privilege of funding your own law enforcement..........

Shortly before noon on a recent Monday, T.J. Cooper sat in his red pickup, showing off his digital camera. He clicked through pictures he had taken a few weeks earlier of a man driving a truck full of radiators stolen from a vacant home here in Indian Village, one of Detroit's last middle-class neighborhoods. No one, Cooper notes wryly, likes having his picture taken. "They try to hide their face. Or break your camera. Or," he says, driving up a tree-lined street, "break you." Minutes later, Cooper passes the same man, in the same truck, apparently scoping out another house.

Cooper, 29, is a private-security detective, one of many who patrol once prosperous enclaves like Palmer Woods, Boston-Edison and Indian Village. With the city's police force cut more than 25%, private security appears to be one of Detroit's few growth industries. Local precincts are overwhelmed with shootings and other violent crime, leaving companies that supply home protection with long customer waiting lists. "People put a premium on security when unemployment and crime go up," says Larry Dusing, founder of Dusing Security & Surveillance, which has expanded into three neighborhoods. (See pictures of Detroit's beautiful, horrible decline.)

Crime weighs heavily on the minds of Detroit's middle class, although it's an issue few residents want to discuss. In some neighborhoods, armed guards stand watch outside houses of worship; in September a pastor shot a man trying to rob his church. In others, street barricades have been set up to help deter potential thieves.

A short, plump Michigan native, Cooper worked in store security before joining Dusing about eight years ago. Now he manages Dusing's patrols, driving around Indian Village in his truck with an orange light bar on the top. He wears a black baseball cap reading security and a bulletproof vest but travels unarmed, partly for liability reasons. He keeps his camera, equipped with a massive telephoto lens, near his lap.

An Indian Village security guard's job is much like that of any cop on the beat. That afternoon Cooper investigated a report of suspicious activity from one of the neighborhood's few markets. (The suspects, sitting in a brown minivan, turned out to be selling state-issued cards used to buy food.) He continued his patrol, eyeing the men walking up and down the street. "If you notice a guy stopping and staring" at a house, Cooper says, "he's obviously up to no good." Especially suspicious are people who walk up to homes and stuff flyers into doors. Sometimes they are testing to see whether a door is unlocked or are casing the property for valuables. "A lot of times we'll see the same car come back three or four times in a single shift." (See more on TIME's Detroit blog.)

The community of Indian Village hired Dusing in 2003, after a rash of property crimes. An estimated 15% of the neighborhood's homes are foreclosed, a result of the national real estate crisis, which has hit Detroit particularly hard. Vacant homes are an open invitation to burglars and vandals. Neighbors install motion sensors and curtains in them and maintain the lawns to make the properties appear occupied.

Members of the Historic Indian Village Association, a local residents' group, share the cost of private security — about $30 per household each month. Association president Doug Way, 42, moved to Detroit with his wife seven years ago and fell in love with Indian Village's 19th century manors, built for the city's emerging industrial barons. Footing the bill for private security is almost like paying an extra tax, he acknowledges, but it's worth the cost. The median sale price of homes in Detroit has plunged from $59,700 in August 2005 to $8,000 just two months ago. "You could argue that one reason the homes are less expensive in the city is the level of services isn't as high," he says. "If there's some way we can make this a better place to live, these homes will actually be worth a lot more in the long term."

What's so "progressive" about paying for your own private security?

Thanks reader Becky.

More.....