Bill Kubota - Daily Detroit

Book Gives Tips On How Not To Be A Dumb Criminal

Krystal Banks got into the bail bonds business eighteen years ago, right out of high school. Since then, she’s learned how the courts work in Southeastern Michigan, and began giving her clients tips on how to protect their rights and better deal with the system. Banks said, “I found that, oh, just giving them a little bit of knowledge changed their outcomes. It was really helping them.” Now Banks is an author with Don’t Be a Dumb Criminal. The book breaks down the workings of the police...

Chasing Fugitive Dust: The Motor City Finds ‘Political Will’ For Cleaner Air

The story starts in 2013, when over in Windsor, Canada people noticed big black piles of some kind of material along the Detroit shoreline south of downtown. It turned out to be petroleum coke, or petcoke, a byproduct Canadian tar sands oil processed at the Marathon refinery in Southwest Detroit. The mountains of petcoke had been trucked in to be loaded onto freighters. Petcoke is used as a fuel, much of it exported and burned like coal in China and India. Doug Hayes of the Canadian...

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VIDEO: Meet DeMeeko Williams, A Man Working To Get Water Turned Back On For Detroiters

A recent study here in Detroit linked greater health issues for those who’ve had their water shut off. And there are a lot of water shutoffs in the city. The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) can’t tell us yet the number of water shutoffs so far this year but Bridge Magazine, a Detroit Journalism Cooperative partner, reported that last year more than 27,000 Detroit homes had their water shut off because of unpaid bills. DWSD estimates as of now, because of new leadership, less t...

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Detroit’s 1967 Uprising Gets Historical Marker At Gordon Park

Last month, Gordon Park on Detroit’s west side hosted a ribbon-cutting with the upgrade of new playground equipment and facilities. This weekend Gordon Park will get its own state historical marker acknowledging its location at the corner of Rosa Parks Boulevard and Clairmount Avenue was ground zero fifty years ago, the spot where the Detroit uprising started. The curatorial team at the Detroit Historical Society authored the text on the marker, working with Michigan Historical Designation b...