Even though crime in Ann Arbor is way down statistically, a series of six recent late night muggings and sexual assaults recently committed have people on edge. The cops union sees this as a chance to get the city council to rescind the police layoffs that took place last month.
As for the rest of the complainers, who knows? We've had similar serious serial crime sprees back in the 60's, 70's and 90's too and that was back when Ann Arbor was a smaller city and had way more cops than it does now. Go figure?
And in an ironic but informed opinion sort of way it is my speculation that the same people now screaming for more police on the streets (other than the cop union-types) would very likely be aghast, mortified, outraged and fuming if it were seriously suggested that surveillance cameras be put up all over the city and starting with places where these attacks have occurred. See, that would be the first step toward an Orwellian police state. Having flesh and blood cops swarming an area watching us continually they would think is totally cool. But a cold, untiring, unblinking camera lens do the watching, well that's fascism they'd say! That's my feeling as a native Ann Arbor townie. And again, go figure?
I can remember the serial attacks (assaults, rapes and murders) from those days in the 90's. The highly aggressive actions of the cops to find the perp and so end the attacks was not at all welcomed by many Ann Arborites even then.
"As the investigation continued", says the AAPD website's account of those times, "women's groups continued to criticize the police department for not releasing the fact that a serial rapist had been stalking women in the city. Black males began protesting that they felt the police department was trying to intimidate them by forcing them to submit to the blood tests and 'randomly' stopping them on the street, forcing them to submit to the blood withdrawal...”
But that was then and this is now. This would all go much smoother now right? Somehow I doubt it.
