Groundbreaking For New Police Precinct On City's West Side
DETROIT (WWJ) - The city of Detroit is getting a new police precinct.
City officials broke ground Tuesday afternoon on a new 8th Precinct on West McNichols, which is right across the street from where the old one used to be.
"There have been a number of bad decisions that city has made over the years that have left the neighborhoods behind," said Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, "but none was worse than closing the precincts - it just made no sense. So my first week the chief says we've got to open a new 8th precinct - I said 'while I was prosecutor it was just across the street it was a great location and a prefectly good precinct - why don't we reopen the old one?' he said, 'the city sold it, it's been scrapped, it's not salvable but we've got a site across the street."
The building housing the former precinct was closed a decade ago -- as the city went through cost-cutting measures during financial struggles.
Reva Gibson, a relative of Police Chief James Craig, who was part of the ceremony, got the ball rolling on the new location.
"The crime was increasing in this area and when they closed it and when they combined the sixth and the eighth we didn't get the response time because they are covering such a large area so I told them they need to reopen this precinct -- they went on the 10th precinct --they had reopened so many, but I said please work hard to get the eighth precinct open," said Gibson.
The old 8th Precinct closed down 10 years ago. Construction should be complete sometime next summer at an estimated cost of just over seven million dollars.
