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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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time
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042489
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04248900.031
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1990-09-17
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NATION, Page 25American NotesCRIMEDismantling Detroit
The tumbledown house on Van Dyke Avenue on Detroit's gritty
East Side looks as if it fell from the sky. Actually, it collapsed
after scavengers pried the bricks out from the foundation. Armed
with wagons, shopping carts, wheelbarrows and pickup trucks,
vandals have descended upon the city's empty buildings. In some
cases, they have hauled away entire walls and porches, brick by
brick. These thefts are a new wrinkle in free-lance demolition on
the East Side, which has also experienced a plague of
aluminum-siding rip-offs.
The scavengers sell their booty to scrap dealers. While new
red bricks cost about $450 per 1,000 on the retail market, dealers
pay the thieves only $50. Since Detroit tears down 2,000 to 3,000
abandoned buildings a year, police are not terribly concerned about
the thefts. The most troubling aspect of this new inner-city crime
wave is the motive of most of the culprits: to get enough cash for
another hit of crack. "Brick stealing is on the upswing, and it's
directly tied to the price of the brick," says Charles H. Smith
Jr., president of the Oakman Boulevard Community Association.
"Crackheads will steal anything, and there's a market for them
because somebody's buying."