Crime

NYT Salutes 'Primary Security Force in Midtown:' WSU Cops

March 01, 2015, 11:25 PM

"This is no ordinary campus police squad," The New York Times says in an admiring look at Wayne State University's 60-officer force.

The department, which spends most of its time operating beyond the university, has invested in high-tech security equipment that looks as if it came straight from the set of “C.S.I.” Since most small businesses operate on razor-thin margins and cannot afford the financial toll of even petty crime, the force has been one of the area’s biggest assets, residents and owners say.

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Chief Anthony Holt of the Wayne State University Police. (WSU photo)

The article by Stacy Cowley appears in the paper's business section because it focuses on increasing commercial activity "on Cass Avenue, a once-blighted strip with a sordid history of drugs and prostitution."

Now called Midtown, the area is one of Detroit’s most striking economic-revival success stories and a veritable haven for small businesses, which had been among the biggest casualties of the city’s urban decay. Coffee shops, yoga studios, restaurants and clothing boutiques now fill spaces that sat empty for decades. The district’s retail vacancy rate has fallen to 10 percent, down from 22 percent six years ago, and its residential occupancy rate tops 97 percent. . . .

Years of dogged, incremental work went into the district’s renaissance, much of it led by the nonprofit development group Midtown Detroit Inc. But those who live and work in the area also point to a more unusual catalyst: the Wayne State University police department. . . . 

“We couldn’t operate here without them,” said Christina Lovio-George, who has run a public relations firm in the neighborhood for 33 years.

Cowley notes that "of the 1,362 arrests made in Midtown last year, 61 percent were made by Wayne State’s officers."


The campus department made more than 60 percent of Midtown arrests in 2014.

Her comprehensive report includes context for the force's off-campus role:

in 2009, the university did something unorthodox: It expanded the department’s purview to cover all crime calls in a four-square-mile territory that encompasses both the campus and all of Midtown. At most schools, security officers only operate off-campus when crimes involve or affect students or faculty members.

The goal, university officials say, was to draw new residents to the area and assuage students’ No. 1 concern about living there. . . .

With a larger budget from the university and grants from several foundations, Wayne State’s police chief, Anthony D. Holt, a 38-year veteran of the force who became its leader in 2008, expanded his department and shifted some of its practices. . . . Wayne State’s video surveillance system is among the most extensive in Michigan, with 850 cameras tracking locations across the school’s campus and beyond. . . .

The efforts are paying off. Midtown’s major-crimes rate is down 52 percent since 2008.

WSU's police serve as a portal into a broader look at Midtown changes by The Times:

Thirty-seven new Midtown businesses opened last year. . . . Empty buildings and storefronts are disappearing. Four hundred new residential units are under construction, with 1,700 more in the development pipeline.

Cowley quotes Nefertiti Harris, who opened Textures beauty 14 years ago on Cass south of Willis: "You see more children in the area, and people walking their pets. People feel secure here. It’s how it should be over the whole city.” 

-- Alan Stamm


Read more:  The New York Times


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