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Amid a flurry of Detroit documentaries this year comes “Detroit Threat Management” a portrait of an east side company headed by a charismatic former Army paratrooper that trains paramilitary security guards for a city desperate for protection.
The firm, Detroit Threat Management Center, provides security for neighborhoods, companies, film sets, visiting celebrities and abused spouses.
It also returns babies who have been abducted by husbands and boyfriends and conducts self-defense seminars. Some work takes them beyond 8 Mile Road.
The guards, called Vipers, wear bulletproof vests and camouflage pants and often carry guns.
The film, which premiered Saturday night in Detroit, shows one trainee reciting the Viper’s “prime directives:”
“Prime directive one,” he shouts with military cadence, “I’ll always place the safety of others before my own. Prime directive two: I”ll never allow anyone to be harmed by my action or inaction. Prime directive three: I’ll be in compliance with all laws unless it prevents protection of life.”
After reciting the directives, the trainee is ordered to drop and do 10 push-ups.
“Detroit Threat Management” is the work of Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman, 26, a filmmaker who for two years followed the firm and its founder, Dale Brown, who uses the title commander and who preaches a message of trust and devotion to duty.“That’s why we exist,” Brown says in the film. “Because there needs to be someone that can be trusted. Someone that will not fail them.
“You do not worship the system. You do not worship anything except success at helping people have a good quality of life.”
Hurwitz-Goodman addresses questions about whether the Vipers are a vigilante movement with little accountability and if their success is a reflection of clients’ willingness to bypass police and hire own protection to cope with pervasive violence and crime.
Backdrop of struggling city
The film’s premiere comes at a time the nearly bankrupt city of Detroit is wrestling with a shrinking police force, a rising homicide rate and highly publicized crimes such as the muggings of VIPs and the robberies of gas stations by gangs armed with AK 47s.
Hurwitz-Goodman grew up in Palmer Woods, attended Roeper School in Birmingham and studied film and media at the University of Chicago. He is the son of Detroit attorneys Bill Goodman and Julie Hurwitz and grandson of the late Ernie Goodman, the legendary Detroit attorney and social activist.
After college, in 2009, Hurwitz-Goodman returned to Detroit and was doing video production for the Metro Times. He lived around E. Jefferson Avenue and Mt. Elliott, not far from Detroit Threat Management, which is housed in a hangar-like building near the Detroit River.
Intrigued, he approached the firm.
“They welcomed me with open arms,” he says.
Brown, 43, who served in the U.S. Army from 1989-91, and his fellow Vipers are largely portrayed in the film as super heros, helping to fill a void left by a decimated police department.
After undergoing training, “Vipers” are expected to volunteer their time on security details. Abused spouses, for example, get free protection. Some Vipers end up getting paid. At present, there are about 50 Vipers, of which about 20 are paid.
Sense of mission
Brown says in the film that his mission is to protect people, regardless of whether he gets paid. He says he trains people, and then acts as a broker, providing security guards to companies. The companies pay the workers directly and give Brown what he calls a "training management fee."
To date, Brown says he has about 500 businesses and 1,000 households as clients. Homeowners pay $10 a month, plus $10 per response, for anything from an alarm to running out of gas to helping an elderly person get up form the ground.
It sounds noble, but the paramilitary vibe has made some people uneasy, something Brown acknowledges.
In an interview with Deadline Detroit, Brown says that some people have mistaken the Vipers for Blackwater USA, now known as Academi, the controversial private security firm that worked for the U.S. government in Iraq and was involved in some very controversial shootings.
The film shows events at the U.S. Social Forum, a 2010 gathering in Detroit of social justice organizations from around the world, for which Detroit Threat Management provided crowd security—unarmed, as Social Forum organizers requested.
Brown takes pride that there were no incidents, and says that carrying guns is not always necessary to keep the peace.
But Hurwitz-Goodman also includes an interview with a woman at the gathering who calls the presence of the Vipers in paramilitary gear “so offensive and so opposite of what the Social Forum stands for.”
Admiration and support
The film provides plenty evidence that the Vipers have numerous fans.
A former Michigan state trooper praises the organization. So do some scared women, who fear retaliation by their partners. Detroit Councilman Ken Cockrel is shown giving Brown and his company an award for “exemplary community service” and protecting “the most vulnerable in Detroit and the wider southeastern Michigan region.”
“We come from a point of peace and positivity,” Brown said during the interview with Deadline Detroit.
The film attempts to flesh out Brown as a person. At one point he is asked if he has a personal life. He laughs and says, “A personal, a family life? Who has that? Humans. I’m a Viper.”
Hurwitz-Goodman describes Brown as a very strong personality.
“There was something likable and always something a little unusual and sometimes overwhelming about the fact he was always on,” Hurwitz-the filmmaker says. “He was a guy who was never off. Incredibly charismatic and easily likable and a magnetic personality.”
