Ryan Fishman is an attorney at Fishman Group, P.C. in Southfield. You can also find complaints, musings, and answers to your legal questions from the former reporter, talk show host, one-time candidate for office and in Yiddish what you might call a bit of a "kvetch" at www.thefishmangroup.com.
Ryan Fishman
By Ryan Fishman
Last March, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy made a pretty shocking announcement. Her office discovered thousands of untested rape kits – more than 11,000 if you’re partial to details – dating back 30 plus years, simply left to collect dust in an old Detroit Police Department storage facility.
It’s a remarkable thought. Somehow we had managed to abandon 11,000 victims and only in the last ten months have we started to wade through the stories those rape kits tell.
In the same press conference, Worthy said the her office, with help from the Michigan State Police, had started processing the kits and at the time they had already identified a staggering 100 serial rapists and ten other convicted rapists.
How many kits had they tested? 1,600 – about 15 percent of the untested kits. Think about that number. In every 16 kits they tested, they found a serial rapist and they were just getting started.
So why bring it up today? What’s the point? Resources, or more accurately, the lack thereof.
It’s January 22. Two days ago, the Governor delivered his State of the State. Not unsurprisingly, he had almost nothing to say about crime and public safety. Of his eight thousand words that evening, 118 touched on the subject:
Two or three years ago I made the point that we had four of the most violent cities in the United States in the top ten. That is unacceptable. Have we fully gotten off that list? No, but, we have made tremendous progress. Over the last few years since we had that program going, to give you idea of results, the four cities: Detroit, violent crime is down 20 percent; Saginaw violent crime is down 26 percent; Pontiac violent crime down 28 percent; Flint violent crime down 28 percent. We are going to keep it up. We are going to stay committed. We’re going to get them off that top 10 list and that is important.
So, to summarize – crime is bad, we don’t want to be on those lists, and we’re “going to keep it up.” Keep what up? I’d like to know what resources the Governor’s office has committed to cutting down crime in places like Detroit, Flint, and Pontiac.
If he actually wants to stand up to crime and make our communities safer then his office, the Attorney General’s office, the Michigan State Police, and surrounding communities need to make tangible commitments to a cooperative, bipartisan public safety agenda.
In law school, I worked in Ms. Worthy’s office – first interning and then volunteering my time in her homicide division. For the better part of a year I watched five incredibly talented yet wholly overworked lawyers struggle to handle the more than 300-plus new cases that come through their doors every year.
And let’s not forget the cold case files, those that have gone unsolved for any number of reasons, including a lack of resources dedicated to Worthy’s office and the Detroit Police Department.
It’s an anecdote I tell often, because for years now I have been confounded by the fact that in the surrounding communities and in Lansing nobody has stepped forward to help.
Bill Schuette isn’t sending his attorneys to Frank Murphy to help solve Detroit’s old murders or its new ones. Governor Snyder hasn’t asked the Legislature to put money aside to fund Ms. Worthy’s office.
In fact, two years ago Ms. Worthy had to sue former Wayne County Executive Bob Ficano just to keep her lights on after he cut her funding by a staggering 28 percent.
If murderers and rapists evade justice in Detroit, it won’t be long before they’re in your neighborhood or mine. Want proof? After MSP started processing those first 1,600 rape kits, they found some of the perpetrators had left Wayne County and committed similar crimes in 23 other states.
This isn’t a problem we can isolate between Eight Mile and the Detroit River. This isn’t a problem Governor Snyder can summate in 118 words.
This isn’t a problem that we as a region can solve without taking notice and demanding accountability from our representatives in Lansing, our prosecutors, and our police forces.
If Rick Snyder is really committed to public safety, then it’s time to commit the dollars necessary to solve the problem and time to lean on his counterpart in Bill Schuette to help come up with a workable solution.
This isn’t about throwing money at the problem, it’s about recognizing that what’s holding back progress in Wayne County is a shift in the realities of and our perception of public safety and it’s holding back the entire state. Do nothing and we won’t be swimming in a river of opportunity; we’ll be up shit’s creek without a paddle.
