Monday, November 24, 2008

Mayoral Forum

The Warrendale Community Organization will sponsor a forum for mayoral candidates on Saturday, January 17 from noon until 3 p.m. in the gymnasium at St. Thomas Aquinas Church. The WCO will invite 5 candidates to address questions such as public safety & crime, economic development in the neighborhoods, mass transit and the City's budget problems.

Members of the WCO will vote at their holiday party on which 5 of the mayoral candidates should be invited. (See below for details on the WCO holiday party.)

More information about this event will be forthcoming on this blog.

Tip of the Week: Courville Containers

After my post about a couple in the Warrendale neighborhood who has been robbed 4 times this year alone, and who have gotten no assistance from the Detroit Police Department, I received a flood of suggestions about what can be done to minimize crime in the Warrendale neighborhood. With all of those suggestions in hand, I've decided to launch a new feature on the Warrendale (Detroit) Blog.
I call it the Tip of the Week. As much as I my schedule permits, I will endeavor to publish this one every Monday. It will include crime prevention and money saving tips as well as general information that's useful to know.

My tip this week has to do with the Courville containers that the Department of Public Works gives everyone in Detroit for their weekly trash collection. It turns out that a growing trend for criminals is to use those containers as something to stand on when they want to break into a home by entering one of its windows.

The Courville containers are widely available, which means that the criminal doesn't have to bring anything with them. Plus, they're the perfect height for a thief to use for entry through a window.

There isn't much that you can do about the City's use of Courville containers or their size. However, you can make it a lot harder for thieves to use them for illicit purposes by storing yours in a garage. The harder it is for a thief to break into your home, the more likely they will be to try.