A Community Takes A Stand

Just wanted to give a quick shout out to the hundreds of Detroiters who have taken to the streets the past few nights in an effort to catch the scumbag(s) preying on elderly women in one westside neighborhood.

I got the chance yesterday to chat with one of the neighbors taking a stand against these cowardly assaults, a 27-year-old woman named Trevor (pronounced TREE-vor) Epps. Epps lives in the neighborhood, situated around Dexter and Davison avenues, with her grandmother. She's also friends with a young man whose 90-year-old grandmother was raped and beaten inside her home last week. (More on Time.com: See pictures of the remains of Detroit )

Epps says she "almost died" when she got news of the attack and told me how, in the wake of other attacks on seniors in their community, she and her neighbors are refusing to passively stand by.

"It wasn't like anybody had to give a speech or anything," she says. "It was like we all just started talking after this last incident happened, and people just decided they weren't taking this anymore. It wasn't planned. There was no 'leader.' We don't need one. We're a community. And we're fed up with this. So we have just been going out into the neighborhood, knocking on doors, talking to people, letting the police know if we think there's someone who may know something about these attacks. We're not having this."

That's what struck me most about this story, the community's quiet resolve and its utter refusal to surrender to rapists and robbers. I often hear about how Detroiters don't stand up against the everyday crime in their own communities, how they'd rather protest less-common but often higher-profile incidents such as police shootings or racially motivated assaults. But this story is just one example of many that show how, in their own ways, people around this city do stand up against the crime, the desolation and the desperation. There are never enough of these folks, of course, but they are out there, often working in obscurity, without the benefit of bullhorns or soapboxes or press conferences. (More on Time.com: See pictures of crime in Middle America)

This week, in Epps' neighborhood, they numbered in the hundreds.

She says clusters of neighbors began gathering near Leslie and Petosky Streets earlier in the week, to discuss the incidents, share information and warn other elderly people in the neighborhood to stay watchful. By the time the group started walking the neighborhood the first night, the crowd had swelled to more than 300 people, Epps says. And while nobody was in a pleasant mood in the aftermath of the attacks, she says the crowd worked willingly with the police to track down suspects and keep things from getting out of hand.

Now, she says, they're talking about maintaining regular patrols. The neighbors will also be rallying this evening on Leslie Street to encourage even more people around the city to join with them, Epps tells me. "People are fed up with crime, fed up with leadership, fed up with how politics are affecting the quality of life in this city," she says. (More on Time.com: See a TIME special on how Detroit lost its way)

But as fed up as neighbors are, Epps says, they are also "hungry for a change."

"I know some people have felt disenfranchised for a long time," she says. "But we can't lose our communities like this. I don't care how bad people tell us things may be in Detroit, we can't ever get to the point where we're attacking elderly ladies or our children. We have to draw the line.

"But we can't even stop with just that, with just drawing the line. We have to start moving forward again."

See more from TIME's yearlong look at Detroit