Chapter 1

Today is a July Thursday in Detroit, Michigan. The time is 8.19 PM, and the sun is high enough above the horizon that the light hasn’t yet turned golden yellow. Detroit is at the very western edge of the Eastern Time zone and evenings come on slow, the way you would expect them in a remote Alaskan city.

I’m writing because I’m waiting. The phone is next to me, plugged into the wall. I may not get a chance to charge it again in the next twenty-four hours. I’m surprised the call hasn’t come yet. I expected it by now. Maybe I’m not getting reception. Maybe the dispatch desk has forgotten to dial me, again.

I’m here to shoot a television show about the Detroit Homicide Unit. The show is called “The First 48.” It’s a reality television show but the producers like to think of it as a documentary drama. Reality TV has a bad reputation so it makes sense someone would want to obscure what we are creating. The show follows detectives around in several cities as they try to solve murders and catch killers. What this means is we are waiting for people to die a violent, mysterious death so we can start filming the crime-solving story.

I’m here with my colleague, Graham. We work as Video Journalists. Usually this means we run around untethered. But here, our job is to follow orders. This show is a kind of evolved version of “Cops.” There is more of a narrative, but it’s basically the same idea: turn the worst reality into pulp and sell it. All flash and glimmer; no context, no message except: “wait until you see what happens next.” When we were being interviewed for the job the producer told us how the show often employs staged moments. We cringed. She said, “Everyone does it. Public television does it. The best documentary filmmakers do it.” We never do it, but we don’t say anything. We could use the work. Now we are here for six weeks.

Outside my window, the weather is too warm and comfortable for people to stay indoors. All throughout the city, you will find folks wandering around, drinking outside of their houses, strolling up their streets. Some of the cops, they say to expect the worst on Thursdays and Fridays because that’s when folks get paid, and getting paid means buying booze. Other cops say, nobody here has jobs so it doesn’t matter what day of the week, you’re always going to find people out there, drinking and smoking. Doing nothing except getting into fights and shooting each other.

Before I arrived, I thought I was informed. I never imagined it could be this bad in my own country and I wouldn’t know it. But now, everything I understood about violence, about the police, about the news, about my neighbors and nation, all these old abstract ideas are becoming memories. This is no place for theories about wealth and poverty. Detroit is a hidden, rotting city. Imagine New Orleans before the flood.

It used to be, if you were entering a neighborhood where an officer might be fired upon, the police said you were going into a ‘Delta Zone.’ Before entering a Delta Zone, you always did a little check, made sure you had your bulletproof vest and a couple of extra guys with you, just in case of trouble. The reason they don’t use the phrase Delta Zone anymore is because there are no places where an officer won’t be shot at. Pretty much, all of Detroit is a Delta Zone.

Sitting downtown, knowing I will have to drive out into the gang territories tonight, I’m still waiting for my bulletproof vest to arrive. Just two metal sheets inside a loose canvas shell, every cop tells me bullet-resistant vest is the better phrase for it. I’ve been asking for the vest every week since we’ve been here, but the production’s distribution office in New York hasn’t gotten around to sending it. They say it takes two to three weeks to be made and sent. That was four weeks ago. At some point, it’s clear that it isn’t coming. You can hear the tone in people’s voices when you ask for the vest. They express shock, as in, ‘How did that not get there yet?’ and then they lean away from the phone and ask someone for an update, and an anonymous voice promises it will arrive next week, which is relayed with the same blasé disinterest that you might expect if we were talking about new shoe laces. The supervising producer calls back and says, “just try not to get into any dangerous situations.”

I try to tell her about the Delta Zones but she isn’t listening.