"Death by a gunshot in Detroit is as natural as it get's."

 310 murders last year (2010)

Sadly, this is quite true in Detroit. They don't call us the  Motor Murder City for nothing.

[Headline: "Mortician discovers gunshot wound in body after man's death ruled natural" - Detroit Free Press]

Sign of the times

There was a joke going around soon after the release of the famous Rodney King beating video that the cop unions next big political push was to impose a background check and a 15-day waiting period on the purchasers of all video recording devices. (Heh! Although sadly, that actually is starting to happen, albeit in a slow boiling-frog sort of way.) And now, to keep current, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing has instituted a ban on news crew cameramen accompanying police on raids. Given that an A&E channel film crew for the TV show The Next 48 (a cop based reality show) was alongside police when one of the DPD's raiders accidentally blew the head off of a seven year girl and the video from that raid is being used in a lawsuit against the city, the mayor now wants to be sure that this kind of thing never happens again. And so it won't; the next time DPD accidentally kills someone there won't be any video of it. That's what passes for progress in Detroit in these times.