Crime

A Violent Act and Its Impact on the Grosse Pointes

January 21, 2015, 11:00 PM by  Allan Lengel

Exactly one month after four Grosse Pointe teens were shot in Detroit – one fatally – police are focusing in on a suspect, and following up on what they see as solid leads. But they have yet to make an arrest.

"Certainly this is very important to us, as is any case involving a homicide," said Detroit Police spokesman Sgt. Michael Woody, who explained that a 21-member homicide task force has been working diligently on the case. "Chief Craig has often said, one death is one too many in the city."

While police remain confident about bringing the shooter to justice, the Grosse Pointes, a tight, affluent community, is still reeling from the impact of the Dec. 22 shooting that has hardened the longtime unease some residents have with their neighboring city.

“I think ‘shock’ is the most appropriate word,” said David Muer, a Grosse Pointer, who has operated the Blue Pointe, a bar and restaurant on East Warren in Detroit for 32 years, not far from the Grosse Pointe border.

One police theory in the shooting is that the gunman mistakenly thought the man he was gunning for was inside the car occupied by the teens. As the gunman emerged from a passenger seat of a car with an assault rifle and protective gear, the car with the teens, some black, some white, drove off, and the gunman opened fire, killing Paige Stalker, 16, of Grosse Pointe Farms, and wounding the others.


The crime scene

A fifth person in the car was not harmed. Police are also exploring other theories.

Police say the teens had gone into the city to buy weed and were sitting in the car smoking. There are conflicting reports as to whether Paige Stalker was smoking.

The shooting, and the $100,000-plus reward in the case, has underscored some longstanding issues: Grosse Pointe’s fragile relationship with Detroit; race and socioeconomic differences; and the little secret – that wasn’t so secret to everybody -- that for years some of Grosse Pointe’s youths have been going into the city to buy marijuana and smoke it there to avoid the watchful eye of the Grosse Pointe Police.

The latter led to Detroit Police Assistant Chief Steve Dolunt making a comment in what appeared to be an effort to shift some blame to Grosse Pointers:

“The kids in Grosse Pointe -- they think it can't happen to them. People shouldn't blame the people in Detroit; your kids are buying drugs there. ”

Not all took kindly to that remark.

“It blurs the line between cautionary and ‘I told ya' so.' . . . It has a divisive tone,” one Metro Detroiter was quoted as saying in a commentary for Deadline Detroit written by former Detroit Free Press crime reporter Ben Schmitt.

The shooting has definitely altered attitudes, and in some ways, hardened some opinions in the Grosse Pointes about the city.

Stay Out of the City

Some parents have instructed their kids to stay out of the city or take different routes while traveling downtown, be it avoiding side streets or simply taking the freeways instead. And at the University Liggett School, where Stalker attended, school psychologists are being made available to students who want to discuss the shootings, school spokeswoman Michelle Franzen Martin said Wednesday.

Muer of the Blue Pointe restaurant and bar, recalls just days after the shooting, his eight adult children, ages 19-33, were planning to go out for the night to shoot pool to celebrate a sibling’s birthday.

“I forbade them from going into Detroit,” he said, listing off some places in the suburbs where they could shoot pool instead. He said he wishes action would be taken to make the area safer, but he’s skeptical much good will come of the tragedy.

Grosse Pointers have long co-existed with Detroit and its border, and generally felt a sense of safety in the Pointes, despite the close proximity to a city that, at least statistically, is one of the more violent ones in the nation. Detroit, which has a population of 700,000, recorded 300 homicides in 2014 compared to 328 in New York, which has 8.4 million people. Detroit Police solved 63 percent of its homicide cases in 2014.

“We know how many shootings there are,” says Robert Stanley, 20, of Grosse Pointe Farms, who attends Boston College and was in for the winter break.

“I wouldn’t say I was particularly surprised. But I guess this situation was more extreme.”

He said the shooting has shaken some of his friends, who go to the Excalibur Bar on Charlevoix Street in Grosse Pointe Park, just blocks from the shooting.

“They don’t want to go there anymore even though it’s Grosse Pointe,” said Stanley, a graduate of University Liggett School.  “It just kind of freaked them out that it happened so close.”


The intersection in Detroit where the shooting took place.

The area of the shooting happens be known as an unsafe neighborhood, says Kelton Verble, 21, who grew up in Detroit and is a alum of Liggett. He is now junior at Purdue University.

“I thought it was a risky area,” he said. ”It was certainly an area that you would want to drive past.”

“I think people are going to be a little more cautious. Unfortunately, with time, they’re going to think it was an isolated case and it’s not going to happen to them.”

Why Smoke in Detroit?

Why take a chance of smoking weed in Detroit, particularly in a sketchy neighborhood?

Alex Parker, 20, a Grosse Pointe Farms resident and junior at Michigan State University, explains that some young residents see Detroit as a better place to smoke, at least when it comes down to minimizing chances of getting busted.

“The Grosse Pointe Police do an unbelievable job, and that’s a good thing,” Parker said. “But a lot of people say, you smoke a small amount of weed in Grosse Pointe and get caught, you’re guaranteed a harsh punishment. “ Getting busted, he adds, can jeopardize peoples’ careers.

The shooting, the hefty reward and media attention has also highlighted the disparity as to how murders in the city involving Detroit residents and suburbanites from affluent communities are sometimes handled.

After the shooting, the reward in the Grosse Pointe shooting case skyrocketed. Normally, Crime Stoppers offers $2,500 for information in a Detroit homicide. But private donors raised that to eventually $12,500. Then some other private donors coughed up an additional $100,000 more for a separate fund.

The disparity didn’t go unnoticed, not even within the police department where some cops privately said they wished other cases would get as much attention.

It also got the attention of Free Press columnist Brian Dickerson, who addressed the issue of reward money in a column. He wrote about why in a murder involving a Detroit black college grad, Christina Samuel, the reward was only $2,500, the typical amount offered by Crime Stoppers. 

“It's easy, for example, to explain away the disparity between the $100,000 reward that unnamed benefactors have offered for clues leading to the conviction of Stalker's killer and the $2,500 that Crime Stoppers of Michigan has made available in Samuel's case: Obviously, Stalker's friends and neighbors must be wealthier than Samuel's.

But it's hard to dismiss the implication that, in the coldest economic terms, the market places a higher value on the apprehension of one girl's killer.”

Resentment in Black Community

The added attention in the Grosse Pointe shooting also triggered resentment in the black community.

Free lance writer and public relations specialist Greg Bowens, an African American who is a former press secretary to ex-Mayor Dennis Archer, and a Grosse Pointe Park resident, wrote a column in Deadline Detroit entitled “Exposing Our Biases in the Grosse Pointe Murder.”

Bowens' column discussed his conversation with a black woman from Detroit about the shootings.

I could almost see the sarcasm flying through the air between us as she spoke. Every word was laced with the venom of resentment barely hidden under the veil of polite conversation.

“You live in Grosse Pointe. What’s the real story? What were they doing there,” said the woman, who like me, is black.

“I don’t know what you mean? They were reportedly just sitting in the car hanging out and smoking weed when somebody jumped out of a car and shot them,” I replied. “Why? What does it matter?”

“Well, it’s just shocking because they’re supposed to be the perfect kids, from the perfect community with the perfect families and all that wealth.”

And just like that, there was the resentment, the anger, and the righteous indignation all rolled up in one sentence referring to the murder of 16 year-old Paige Stalker and the wounding of three other teens recently. Like somehow, four kids doing what teenagers sometimes do – go someplace quiet to smoke weed, make out or just share the secrets of their angst away from grown-ups – deserved what came next.

There have been positives from it all.

Several suspected carjackers and armed robbers have been arrested as a result of police investigators  continuing their search for the individuals involved. Besides the shooter, who was a passenger in a car, there was at least one other person in the car.

There have also been efforts to downplay any racial divide.

A week after the shooting, at a press conference that talked about the reward, community activist Malik Shabazz, an African American, said:

“This is a human issue. This is not a Detroit issue, it’s not a Grosse Pointe issue. It’ s not a black or white issue. It’s a human being issue.”

People in the Grosse Pointe area have also adorned trees with pink and green ribbons in memory of Paige Stalker, something the family has appreciated.

"It's been a really difficult three weeks so seeing these is very warming. It touches my heart," Paige’s mom, Jennifer Stalker told Fox 2.

Sara Fischer, a lifelong Grosse Pointe resident, finds it troubling that race, socioeconomic differences and talk about the physical divide between Detroit and Grosse Pointe have surfaced.

“It’s upsetting to see people bring up those feelings,” said Fischer, who is married and has a child in junior high. “We’re all one community. I worked in Detroit for years. I know people who live in Grosse Pointe feel very connected to Detroit and I just hate to see those lines being drawn. It’s just gotten ugly.”

“We’re trying to pull together to find out who did this,” she said. “The bottom line is we just want this person caught."



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