The Punishers

"I'd rather be judged by 12/Than carried by six..."

-- Ice Cube

Detroitblogger John offers up a riveting piece in the Metro Times this week about life on the ground in my old 'hood and the diligent, everyday heroes fighting to keep violent thugs at bay.

Along the way, he highlights the sad tale of Tigh Croff, a security guard whose eastside home was broken into three times in one week over the Christmas holiday. When Croff caught some guys in his backyard during a fourth attempt, he chased them, caught up to one and emptied his gun into the guy, killing him on the spot. In the MT article, Croff's story -- along with that of a federal agent who  accosted people in his elderly mother's neighborhood after her house was burglarized -- dramatically bring into focus the mounting pressure facing residents in some of the city's most crime-plagued communities.

Pressure that has some Detroiters taking the law into their own hands...

It happened just outside Jackson's neighborhood, but it was close enough, and familiar enough, for him to understand Croff's anger. "We want to support that guy as much as we can," Jackson says. "Everybody in Detroit should support him. You go out in the neighborhood, talk to the neighbors, they say he takes care of the neighborhood."

The same is said about Alvin Davis. During Memorial Day weekend last year, after someone broke into his elderly mother's house on Marlborough, a couple streets over from Jackson, Davis, a federal agent with the Department of Homeland Security, spent the weekend allegedly combing the neighborhood, interrogating several residents, even forcing one into his car at gunpoint. He's currently awaiting trial on several charges.

The state law says deadly force is acceptable as self defense, only if your life is threatened. The law doesn't say you can shoot an unarmed man who's running away, or chase down neighbors and hold them for interrogation sessions. The law sets a fairly clear line between self-defense and vigilantism.

Despite their alleged actions, Croff and Davis are heroes in the Jefferson-Chalmers area. "When they broke in her house he lost it," Lewis says. "Can you imagine someone breaking into your house three times in a week and you have to go to work and wonder what's going on at your house? It's been a battle. So we empathize with Mr. Croff and Mr. Davis, and a lot of us are going to show up, if this man goes to court to support him."

Police spokesman Roach has heard the neighbors justify such alleged actions by citing slow police response, but he says that, of the three times Croff says his property was burglarized, he reported only one incident. "We had a B&E that was discovered on the 19th of December," on Croff's property, he notes. "That's the only one we got a call on. So there were others that were not brought to our attention. And it was dispatched two minutes after the call came in."

He acknowledges, though, that sometimes, when faced with a situation in which they feel preyed on over and over, some people will react violently. "I don't know if there's anything short of catching every suspect that would prevent somebody from taking drastic steps," he says.

I can't peer into the hearts of Croff or Davis, don't claim to know their intent. But I do know what it's like to grow up in a neighborhood where drug dealers drop bodies like breadcrumbs, particularly busybodies. I know the pain and fear of being a child walking through a busted door for the umpteenth time, over broken glass, past hastily emptied shelves and through ransacked rooms to find that whatever else the thieves have stolen, they've taken still more of that peace of mind that you never fully recovered after robbery before this one -- and knowing full well that they will be back.

I know what it means to pull up late on your block and see your mother wandering aimlessly through a trash-strewn alley, to walk over to her and see tears cascading from her eyes because she'd just beaten you home, exhausted and her feet throbbing from a nine-hour workday, only to find a neighborhood-notorious violent criminal  in her house, threatening her life before snatching her purse and sprinting out into the night.

And I know to what it's like, after waiting on cops who never showed, to call your crew and head out into that same night, dead set on making sure that your mother doesn't ever have to fear that guy again.

Oh, I realize that it's wrong on many levels, this knee-jerk vigilantism. But for preyed-upon people grappling daily with crime and violence in a city that has struggled for years to solve just 6 of every 10 of its murders and provide even basic protections to its most besieged citizens, it's not always as simple as we like to think to define what's truly "right."