By Ron Seigel
This TV season, some Detroiters feel that a fictional police drama tells more about their lives than most news broadcasts.
The plot in one episode of the drama “Detroit 1-8-7” involves a conspiracy of unscrupulous investors trying to take Detroit land by forcing people out of their homes, their neighborhoods, and communities.
In real life, this has often been done by getting city officials to use constitutional power of eminent domain, giving government the power to take private property. Frequently, local officials got around the obligation to provide fair compensation for these residents by cutting basic services and making conditions so unsafe that residents were pressured to move out.
The TV drama specifically located the land the conspirators wanted in an actual Detroit area of real controversy, Brush Park, between Woodward and Brush Street, close to Comerica sports stadium.
In 2001, before a public hearing, Detroit City Councilman Clyde Cleveland stated tactics in Brush Park represented “terrorism.”
He told how bulldozers tore down the dental office of Dr. Barbarah Womack, which was established by her father. City residents claimed this was done by mistake.
One elderly resident told of fires being set in vacant houses, which were legally supposed to be preserved as official historic districts. She stated pilots in helicopters set the fire.
Cleveland said, “I was there. I saw it. There were fires at night.”
Two years later, in 2003, the head of the city’s arson squad, Charles Tucker, refused to investigate two fires that his own department classified as suspected arson. He state conditions inside were dangerous and his department lacked adequate equipment. Gwendoline Mingo, who chairs the citizen district council established under Michigan law to represent Brush Park residents and businesses, said homeless people displaced by urban renewal were seeking shelter in one of the buildings and barely escaped with their lives.
The TV plot deals with the murder of a heroic Brush Park woman fighting for the community and the rights of her neighbors.
One Brush Park resident said, “This was a character sketch of Gwendoline Mingo.”
Mingo is currently very much alive, but she has faced a number of dangerous situations that some are not ready to accept as complete coincidences.
On Nov. 12, 2001, two days after she won a freedom fighter award for her activities challenging eminent domain policies, an “odd fire” broke out in her apartment.
“I called for 45 minutes,” she said, “but no one came.”
In 205, contractors from the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation just happened to keep knocking down holes in the gas main next to her home. Employees of the electric company declared this was a serious fire hazard. Community leaders from throughout the city came to her house and held what they called a “vigil” to prevent further dangers to her and her family.
Mingo said the gas main was ultimately fixed by the electric company employees, who told the contractors not to get involved because their continuous wrecking of the gas main was “like deja vu.”
A few years later, some doubted that it was purely coincidental that a hit-and-run driver crashed her car into a lamp less than a week after Mingo filed suit against city eminent domain policies.
Today, Mingo is concerned about environmental dangers affecting everyone in the community — the failure of the city to prevent asbestos from demolished houses blowing across Brush Park and the city dumping soil that she believes is contaminated. She states residents have breathing problems and says people on a number of blocks have died just as the city sought to take their land. Mingo’s own husband died unexpectedly.
However, the ending of “Detroit 1-8-7” episode was inaccurate. In the end, a dedicated law enforcement officer challenged the investors and their conspiracy. So far, no public official has come forward to do this in real life.
