I'm from Detroit (originally from Australia, LOL!) but I get sick of talking about the place.
You gotta remember there's almost two Detroits: inside 8 Mile Road (blighted, rough, African-American neighborhoods) and outside 8 Mile Road (safe, white and suburban).
There is no sign of Italian LCN inside 8 Mile Road from what I've seen. From what I can gather, LCN in Detroit are strictly behind the scenes - no street level shit. Probably more into selling kilos, not nickel bags, in other words.
Detroit isn't really a gang town, as such. What I mean is there's no major Bloods/Crips type gangs, just smaller neighborhood gangs like the YBN crew. (The 'Young Brewster Niggaz' - they are kids whose parents were from the notorious Brewster Housing Projects on Detroit's rough Eastside.)
I live Downtown (business district and highrise apartments) but I frequently go into the 'hood coz a friend has 'dealings' there, shall we say. I'm often in his car so I have to go along for the ride. Heroin is called 'dog food'.
There's Mexicantown near the MCS train station ruins and the Ambassador Bridge, but I don't know if there's any Mexican gang activity around town. Detroit's a rough place and you have to steer clear of any shit to be safe. Being a ghetto-gawker can be dangerous.
The crack-cocaine epidemic of the 80s was probably when Detroit was its most murderous and most profitable for the local gangsters - Rockin' Reggie, Maserati Rick, Meech, The Best Friends, etc. All of that happened inside 8 Mile Road in the inner city. I suspect the LCN in expensive suits live in Grosse Point.
Hope it is worth gambling with your life so you can play gangster.
I grew up around there; life isn't worth a nickel in the Detroit ghetto.
It's not Ali G sh$t that goes on there it's Mogadishu style mindless violence with a drug chaser.
Some kids from Grosse Pointe were killed doing what you did last week.
Some French artist thought he'd explore Detroit last year and got murdered by a pack of teenagers for the handful of dollars he had in his wallet.
Jonnynonos, I hear what you're saying. I work in the media and sometimes we have to go into Detroit or Mogadishu. Detroit is changing, especially the re-growth of Downtown and Midtown, but the empty and blighted suburban neighborhoods will stay empty until Detroit's population starts to grown again, if that ever happens.
The death of that French artist in Detroit is an interesting story and one that I'll be following closely. There's a journalist from the Detroit Free Press newspaper covering that trial and I might help her with a bit of info.
The French artist (Bilal 'Billy' Berreni) was a street painter who was killed while exploring the ruins of the Brewster Housing Projects late at night. That's in the rough Eastside, so I don't know why the guy was carrying $300 cash in his wallet.
http://www.wxyz.com/news/13-year-old-murder-suspect-uses-victims-money-to-buy-weed-and-junk-foodBilal Berenni's killers were from the YBN gang. The interesting thing about YBN is that they were also a professional rap group called PBS, as well as being a dangerous street gang. They recorded songs and music video-clips and had a booking agent for their live shows.
The YBN gang were already on the Police radar for robberies around the WSU campus in Midtown and other stuff.
I'm not a fan of rap myself, but here's some of the YBN/PBS stuff:
The Purge, a song about YBN 'purging' unwanted friends from their crew:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0XJMsgGv9gFree The Squally ("the Squally" are the three or four YBN members who killed artist Bilal Berreni with a bullet to the face):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf5ZjSTaD60Killin Me':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0U-WVar3UAMaybe they should learn to fly beneath the radar. YBN are so young, but heaps of them are already dead or inside for a long stretch.
